Consacra
by Cantare
Summary: A man with questions inevitably goes to their place of origin. The story of a mercenary prince, a beautiful machine, and a peaceless guardian, on a journey after answers to questions too deep to ignore. Vegeta, 18, Piccolo
1. Prologue A

Prologue A

It amused him to be sitting here.

Vegeta wondered what went on in the mind of the black-robed human on the other side of the wooden pane when he listened to the confessions of killers, rapists, and robbers. With only a thin slab of wood to hold up anonymity and impersonality. He wondered how cold men's confessions were.

Men confessed for different reasons. Some out of guilt, accumulated like suffocating dust in an old room. Some out of fear that a god or spirit or death would catch up with them and take from them what they had taken from others. Some out of remorse, believing they had committed the heavy evil of what humans called "sin." And some, out of coldness.

His confession was born from such. His breaths were even as he considered what to tell the invisible man beside him. Coldness. Perhaps the only reason to confess that was not a reason at all.

"My son, when was the last time you came to make a confession?"

It amused him that humans used titles so nonchalantly, so often without meaning. His father was dead.

"This is the first."

"Welcome, then, to the Father's house. What sins have you come to confess?"

He wondered how much time the human had. Perhaps the longest confessions took an hour, two? As far as a confession could be considered a mere listing of crimes, he was sure no human could compare with him.

He decided to spare the man his time. From the catacombs in his mind, he looked toward one unremarkable hole in the rock wall. A sin astronomical by human standards, but easily overlooked if his memory were not filed so cleanly.

"I have committed murder."

"I see. What were the circumstances, son?"

The man's unruffled, soft voice amused him.

"I was on my way to Earth on a mission. Out of boredom, my companion and I decided to make a stop on another planet. After our brief visit, I destroyed the planet, killing all its inhabitants. I have a close estimate from the intergalactic registry. Three billion, four hundred seventy five million."

The silence was expected. Vegeta smiled. The man surely thought this was a case of insanity, not sin.

The man spoke again in the same dispassionate, soft voice.

"What was the name of the planet?"

Now this was interesting. Vegeta looked toward the wooden pane as if he could see through it. The unexpected question could either mean the human believed he was playing along in a fantasized story, or he was not human after all.

"Arlia."

Vegeta could almost hear the man nod. He spoke again, not unpleasantly, "Why did you destroy this planet Arlia?"

Vegeta hesitated before continuing. This conversation had indeed become strange. It was intriguing and refreshing in its own way.

"I was bored." It was the truth.

Another pause from the priest.

"Boredom by definition cannot engender a specific action, only ambivalence. Son, can you tell me the true reason you committed murder?"

"Genocide, you mean?" Vegeta smiled.

"Murder is the forceful taking of life. Murder will suffice."

The man had challenged his truth. Vegeta thought for a long moment. The truth was boredom. Or perhaps _his_ truth was boredom. Or it was part of the truth.

"It was fun."

He could sense the man pondering this new statement.

"For how long was it fun?"

"Until after the fireworks faded," Vegeta said, remembering the spectacular light display from Arlia's implosion. Beams of light searing through space in all directions, outshining the nearby sun. And pieces of Arlians floating by his window.

"Why was fun important to you?"

For the first time, Vegeta questioned whether this man was a psychiatrist or a priest, asking the most unexpected, irritatingly neutral questions. Where were the condemnations? His skin had itched with anticipation to intimately encounter the idea of sin and the burden it brought for so many humans. Now that yearning for a challenge was dulling.

"Fun is not important to me."

"Was fun more important than non-boredom?"

"…Why are you asking these questions?"

Vegeta knew without a doubt that the man was smiling now.

"Why are you answering them falsely?"

Vegeta closed his eyes and calmed his breathing, which had unexpectedly quickened as annoyance flitted across his mind.

He backtracked to the last question he had answered "truthfully" according to the priest.

"Arlia."

A congenial silence, willing him to continue.

Vegeta chose his words carefully. "I was bored. And I liked to have fun. I felt it was amusing when I destroyed the planet."

"The feeling of amusement came to you. But a passive feeling cannot be the reason for action. Just as disliking boredom and liking fun are not reasons."

"Why are you telling me my own account of my own actions is wrong?"

"Because you already know it is wrong."

Vegeta was frustrated. He looked toward the panel once more, his gaze boring into the area where the man's face would be if there was no panel.

He was also annoyed that a conversation with a human could frustrate him so quickly.

"Is it possible to have knowledge without realization?" he asked.

"Your asking that question already says you are drawing closer to a realization." The enigmatic answer was not satisfying.

Vegeta was intrigued, annoyed, and impatient. But patience was something he had learned well, and he chose to exercise it now. He would make this wooden box his cage until he got what he came for.

"So…I know why I destroyed Arlia, but I have not realized it."

"Yes."

Silence.

"How can I realize the so-called 'true' answer?"

The priest smiled invisibly.

"Come back tomorrow."

* * *

The box was a cage, but he would enter and leave as he wished.

This was like a game. If he saw it in this way, the whole frustrating process would perhaps be more amusing. And Vegeta liked to imagine that stakes were involved in every game.

"What sins have you come to confess?"

He drew a card that had just been placed at the bottom of the deck.

"I have committed murder."

"I see. What were the circumstances, son?"

"I was on my way to Earth on a mission. Out of boredom, my companion and I decided to make a stop on another planet."

He paused and considered rearranging the deck. What was the point of intentional déjà vu?

The priest did not interrupt. The silence yawned for sound.

"After our brief visit, I destroyed the planet, killing all its inhabitants. I have a close estimate from the intergalactic registry. Three billion, four hundred seventy five million."

The silence was expected. Vegeta smiled. This time, the man surely thought this was a case of insanity.

The man spoke again in the same dispassionate, soft voice.

"What was the name of your companion?"

Vegeta had to pause and reanalyze what cards this priest held.

"Nappa."

"Did your companion Nappa have a part in the murder?"

"He was nearby as I fired the shot." He remembered the gruff laughter of the older Saiyan echoing his own as the planet had begun to disintegrate.

"Did he have a part in the murder?"

"What does that mean?"

"Was your companion Nappa involved deliberately in any part of the act of murder?"

"He laughed as I destroyed Arlia."

"Does laughter implicate him in the murder?"

A muscle in his jaw twitched. Being forced into these doddering infant steps around minutiae did not sit well with him.

"Nappa had no hand in the murder. I was the sole actor." He wondered why the priest was so intent on this issue.

"Why was Nappa nearby during the murder?"

"We were on a mission to Earth." Vegeta disliked repetition now. "Together we stopped at Arlia. Together we left. Naturally, Nappa was there when I destroyed the planet."

"Did he choose to be there?"

"He was my servant, and I his Prince," Vegeta said, not without a little tension. These sidewinding questions were irritating. "It does not matter whether he wanted to be there or not. I daresay the dimwit enjoyed his servitude. What does this have to do with my sin against Arlia?"

"Have you been speaking of your sin against Arlia?"

"I've been answering your impertinent questions about a long-dead servant of mine. I came here to find the truth about Arlia, as we agreed upon yesterday."

"Have patience, my son. Truth answers to demands only on its own terms," the priest said gently.

Vegeta turned this thought over briefly in his head before asking, "Has it not been obvious that I am speaking of my sin against Arlia?"

"The Father has already heard your confession of this sin."

Vegeta leaned forward on the small wooden bench, his face propped on his hands.

"I confess I am unfamiliar with the customs of this house. If it is policy that I cannot speak of a sin already confessed…"

"There is no policy preventing you from speaking as you wish."

"Then…" He paused and decided the priest must have been trying to lead him into some sort of trap, given Vegeta's limited knowledge of the rules of this place. The subject of Arlia soured on his tongue and he threw his remaining cards away with disgust.

Holy men were not supposed to play games. Yet this one did.

The man was bold to join this game. Vegeta could respect that.

"Then…" he mused, speaking more to himself than to his neighbor.

"May I suggest," the priest said softly, "continuing with the sin we were discussing just now?"

_What was this man getting at?_

"Do you want to hear about Arlia or not? Or some other genocide, perhaps? I have many more to tell of, holocausts that make Arlia look like drowning ants," Vegeta said tensely. Funny—the Arlians had looked like insects after all.

"Murder is the forceful taking of life. Murder will suffice."

Vegeta took a slow breath and let go of all vestiges of the game he had constructed. "I repeated myself in the beginning for amusement, but the amusement has ended. I have ended my farce, and you will end yours."

"None of this was a farce, my son," the priest said placidly. "You were not speaking of Arlia."

"No, I was speaking of Nappa because—"

He stopped.

"Yes," the priest said.

"What do you know of Nappa?" Vegeta questioned.

"I know of him from what you have answered truthfully. He was your companion who went with you to Arlia, as you established yesterday. Today, you revealed that he was nearby when you committed murder, though he had no hand in it himself. And he is now dead."

"What have I answered untruthfully, then?"

"You have not been untruthful, but you have avoided questions."

"Name the first."

"Does laughter implicate him in the murder?"

"I already explained that I was the sole actor in the murder—"

"You are avoiding the question."

Vegeta suppressed the urge to punch through the wooden panel. "No. Laughter does not implicate him."

The priest's calm voice did its part in defusing his anger somewhat. "The second question is, did he choose to be there?"

"Yes, he did."

There was silence for a moment. "Perhaps you might rethink your answers."

"Do you think I'm twisting the truth?"

"The truth has its own way, my son. Neither you nor I have any way of changing it."

"I tire of your riddles. Speak plainly."

"Perhaps it would be best to start over."

Vegeta glared dangerously at the panel. "You are toying with my patience."

"You are free to leave if you wish."

Vegeta sat in silence for several minutes.

"Begin," he said curtly.

"What sins have you come to confess?"

"Murder."

"What were the circumstances, son?"

Vegeta was calm. He would say what the priest most likely wanted to hear. He would not be led like a dumb animal into a trap of words and abstract statements. Somehow, Nappa was important.

"My companion Nappa and I were headed to Earth on a mission."

He paused, waiting for an interjection from the priest. There was none.

"We stopped at Arlia, and upon leaving, I, acting alone, destroyed it and murdered billions of Arlians."

He paused again. No response.

"What else is there to say?"

"You have not finished the story, have you?" the priest said.

He remembered that he was supposedly not speaking of Arlia.

"We arrived on Earth."

Silence. Approval.

"We fought several human warriors. Nappa destroyed a city and all the humans in it."

"And your act of murder?"

"My act of murder…"

Not Arlia.

Earth.

It was absurd. This human had made him afraid of giving the wrong answer. No, not afraid, Vegeta amended—there was nothing to fear. He _despised_ giving the wrong answer. So he kept silent and furiously thought over the matter.

"Was your companion Nappa involved deliberately in any part of the act of murder?" the priest asked gently.

If his suspicions were true…

"No."

"Does laughter implicate him in the murder?"

"Yes…"

"Why was Nappa nearby during the murder?"

"Because I forced him to be…"

He envisioned a pale smile slowly appearing on an invisible face.

"So…did he choose to be there?"

"No, he did not."

It was absurd; Vegeta's heart was pounding. He clenched his fists.

"Now, my son, why did you commit murder?"

Vegeta closed his eyes and leaned back against the wooden board.

"He laughed, and he thanked me." The image flashed in his mind, Nappa reaching up and taking his hand, his laugh cut short by a bloody cough. And, still unable to stand, he had choked out his thanks for Vegeta's help. Something Saiyan warriors never did.

"And…"

"I decided to kill him for his weakness."

Not Arlia. Earth. The only murder he had committed on Earth at that time.

"The personal traits of others are not a reason for murder."

"Just as disliking boredom and liking fun are not reasons, I suppose?" Vegeta said mockingly. "Well, I despised Nappa's weakness. It bothered me greatly, and I decided he was not a servant worth keeping. As his Prince I was within my rights to kill him."

"So why did you commit the murder?"

Vegeta paused. "I despised his weakness."

"Again."

"I was greatly bothered by his weakness."

"Again."

"I decided to kill him for his—"

"Yes," the priest interrupted.

"I decided?"

Silence.

It was absurd. Vegeta no longer cared what he himself thought was right or wrong. He only _despised _giving an answer that was wrong in the human's eyes. Absurd.

"I decided to kill Nappa. That is my reason for murder."

It was absurd, that he would give an answer he did not know or believe was right, but would agree that it was right if a human said so.

The human must have smiled then.

"Yes."

"And the truth about Arlia…" Vegeta opened his eyes. "I decided to destroy it. I chose to murder the three billion."

"The Father has heard your confession, my son. Do you wish to repent?"

Vegeta left the confessional.

* * *

The echo of his shoes tapping on the wooden floor of the confessional was uncomfortably loud. He noticed for the first time the sound of his own breathing. There was no sound from the other side of the panel.

"Hello again," he said with cold amity.

"Good evening, my son."

"Didn't expect me to be back, did you?"

"A man with questions inevitably goes to their place of origin."

"Yes. Well," he said with a hint of smugness. "Tonight I will question you."

"You are certainly welcome to."

_You will not be so composed by the end_, Vegeta thought smugly.

He began. "I wish to hear you confess. What is the worst sin you have committed?"

There was a chuckle from the other side of the panel. "Valid question." A pause. "They are all the worst."

Vegeta was irritated but not surprised at the man's offroad answer. It would just take longer for him to get to his challenge. "What do you consider the worst? Murder? Betrayal? Or perhaps one of the seven deadlies?"

"They are all the same."

"How is that possible?"

"Each is a denial of the truth."

"So you are saying that murder is the same as stealing candy."

"The path one walks is different, but the choice is the same. So also is the result."

This was just a side journey. Eventually they would make it back to what Vegeta wanted to discuss. He tried to bear patiently with this line of reasoning.

"Choosing to murder and choosing to steal are different."

"In both cases, one chooses to deny truth."

"But the results are not the same. In one, there is death. In the other…there is an unhappy child, at worst."

The priest sighed. Was this the first sign of exasperation? "Do you only see the immediate physical result? Is there not one even more immediate than that?"

"Denying the truth? What is truth?" Vegeta sneered.

"Denial is the origin. It must begin in the will. One decides, and denies. Actions are then mere reactions."

"And the result?"

"Death."

Vegeta laughed. "Stealing candy leads to death?"

"You are still seeing only the surface, the physical."

He had a reason to ridicule this man now. Even the coarsest dimwit could topple the man's reasoning.

"So you and I are still alive. Our choices haven't led to death."

"You are still seeing only the surface."

"And the truth is beneath, I suppose. Just like the whole stinking planet of Arlia was."

Silence. Vegeta felt good.

"You've never killed a man, have you?"

"I have."

Surprise.

"Oh, so I'm dealing with an ex-murderer priest. Did the church help you pay your way out of jail?"

"I was not part of the church."

"Fair enough. You were a young man with passions then. I sympathize," Vegeta said cordially. "How many have you killed?"

"Many."

Surprise.

"An ex-serial murderer priest, then. But I suppose, compared to my track record, you're still holy enough to hear confessions."

"It takes no holiness to hear confessions."

"What's the worst—I mean, most repulsive—sin a man has confessed to you? Surely nothing can outdo the genocide of the Arlians." He was finally moving toward his goal, refusing to be tied down by small talk.

"There have been many."

"You seem to delight in vague answers."

"And you are not at all vague in your current intent."

He bristled at the priest's sleight of hand. "Oh, and what might my intent be?"

"Proceed, my son. Tell me a story of sin. One greater than the genocide of the Arlians."

The man had met his challenge, preempted it, in fact. Vegeta took a second to regain his calm.

There was no way the man would remain calm after this story.

He began. He left no detail out of the narration and did not mince words. He felt every phrase and sentence defiling the quiet sanctity of this house. It was an enjoyable hour spent narrating the story of one day of his life.

He finished. Memories retreated from his lips, slowly settling back into their proper places in the catacombs of his mind. The faint savor of blood and screams faded from his tongue.

He waited. The man had remained silent and unmoving through the story. Perhaps in shock. Vegeta had held nothing back. Every bloody detail, every sick and horrid pleasure he had felt, every bit of violence was there.

"Well?" he said, relishing the man's silence. Funny, this human was now the only one on Earth who had heard this one slice of the most terrible of realities. Cruelties unimaginable to his race.

"Would you like to make this a confession, my son?"

Vegeta studied the man's voice. It was softer. But without trepidation.

And without anger. That made him angry.

Who was this human? Did holy men of this race have the capability to withstand their own emotions? Surely he was furious inside, furious at the utter evil he had just heard and was speaking to. But how could he hide it?

"This is not a confession," Vegeta said tensely. "I have merely told you the events of one day of my life. One day. I have lived many years; would you like to hear more?"

"Would you like to tell more?"

Vegeta clenched his fists in his lap. "How…how is it that you are not disturbed, not terrified or hateful? How can you see me as anything more than an animal?"

"The most repulsive sins are those that only human beings can commit, those that animals are incapable of committing."

"I am not human," Vegeta snarled. "And neither are you. Who are you?"

There was no self-satisfaction in the priest's voice. Only calm neutrality.

"I am the priest who has heard your story and now has a story to tell you. Will you hear it?"

* * *

He felt _pain_. It was impossible. Yet it was coursing through the length of his arm, the one he had used to try to smash the panel.

"Fuck! Who the hell are you?!" he demanded. "I'll fucking kill you!"

"Did I speak the truth?" The voice of the priest was like a soft undertone to Vegeta's rage.

"Let me out of here and face me," Vegeta seethed.

"Did I speak the truth?"

"To hell with your philosophizing. I demand that you tell me who you are."

The priest's voice seemed to sigh in sorrow and finality. "Truth answers to demands only on its own terms, my son. Anger only obscures its voice."

"Fuck you! Let me out of here!" Pain shot through his leg upon forceful contact with the front screen. The thin, intricately carved wood of the door was unmarred. "What the hell is this place?!"

"It was not answers you sought when you first walked in these hallowed doors," the priest began. The sound of his voice was not as before. "It was amusement and folly."

Vegeta set his fist alight with ki and slammed it against the panel.

"Such was the challenge you sought." The voice seemed no longer embodied in a man, no longer drawn from breath and vocal cords, but alive in the fabric of the air, rapidly filtering through the dry wood of the panel of separation.

"But now there are many questions, beyond what you bargained for."

He withdrew his stinging fist and clenched the side of his head. It was as if small needles were piercing his skull, settling in and twisting with echoes of words.

"It is possible to seek and to find only if what you seek is willing to be found." The words spoke and hovered everywhere around him in the tight confined space of a confessional.

"And a man with questions inevitably goes to their place of origin."

Vegeta gritted his teeth against a scream of pain.

"Will you accept a new challenge, presented by the answer?"

"Who…are…you.."

"The power of choice is yours, my son."

* * *

He spoke hardly a word to her even as she shouted and screamed and finally pleaded and sobbed. The supplies and fuel were ready, and he knew the essentials of operating the craft. He slept one night under the open stars, guarding the entrance to the ship so that she would not sabotage it and stop him.

Oddly enough, it seemed the child understood. The boy watched quietly and did not make a sound even as his mother raged. Vegeta turned away, unsettled.

The stars shone coldly above, more numerous than the blades of grass among which he lay. Somewhere among them was his destination. A place from long ago, the "place of origin."

Truth, sin, death, life—to hell with it all.

He would find that man. And kill him.


	2. Prologue B

Prologue B

The waves were quiet today. They approached the shore in methodical succession, slower than usual. Clouds lay across the sky like a glaze, shielding her skin from the sun. Even the cries of the gulls in the background seemed subdued.

"Beautiful day, eh?"

She did not reply as he sat down beside her in the sand. He crossed his arms over his knees, assuming the same position she had been in for the past hour.

"How can you sit like that?" he asked with a chuckle. "Just how flexible are you?"

She cast him a sidelong glance. "Flexible enough."

He smiled, unfazed by her coolness. "Can I listen?"

She slowly withdrew her arms from her knees, wondering once again why he asked to do this every day. Stretching her legs out in front of her, she leaned back on her elbows, making sure her hair did not touch the sand. It was the most uncomfortable feeling whenever her hair brushed dirt.

She rolled her eyes as he looked at her shyly and shifted his weight gingerly so that his head rested on her belly. His awkward mannerisms had grown on her, she supposed.

"Hmm…nothing right now…oh—wait, it's kicking!"

His laugh sent an odd sensation running across her skin. "Krillin, it does that all the time."

"I know," he said, turning his head to look up at her. "But it's still amazing. Gosh…I'm going to be a father. I mean…we're going to be parents."

"Stating the obvious is ever your forte."

"Aw come on, lighten up. Let me see a smile!"

She slapped away the hand that was about to squeeze her cheek.

"Krillin, I'm not a baby. The baby is in here."

"You'll always be my baby," he said, winking. "Do do doop, oh, do do doop do doop da dum…"

Superb. She had started him singing. His voice was always horribly off pitch. Especially when he tried to sing tunes by female singers.

"Stop it."

"…You'll always be a part of me, I'm part of you indefinitely…"

"Krillin."

"Okay, okay," he sighed. "I guess I'll have to get better at serenading so I can sing the baby to sleep."

"You can certainly sing the baby awake."

"Oooh, honey, that burns," he said with a fake wince of pain.

Perhaps there was something good about having a husband who was seldom serious. Maybe it balanced out their relationship since it was impossible for her to be anything but serious.

"Hey lovebirds, it's time for dinner!" a voice called from the house behind them. A short pig in an apron waved from the doorway.

"Oolong's cooking tonight?" she grumbled.

"Hey, I heard that!"

Krillin stood and smiled, extending his hand to help her up. "Until you learn to cook, babe, gotta deal with it. Wouldn't it actually be nice to have meals as a family once the baby's here?"

"You're cooking then. I'm not doing any housework."

"Oh ho, we'll see. We shall see," he said as they started back up the beach together.

* * *

The forest here was dense, far from any roads. She disliked the smell of damp wood after a rainfall. She floated over the ground, not wanting to muddy her shoes. The incessant sounds of animals were everywhere.

She arrived at the cabin and noticed he was already outside, leaning against one of the log walls, arms folded. He gave a nod to acknowledge her presence.

"You can stop levitating, sis. The ground ain't gonna swallow you up."

She frowned as she lowered her feet to the ground, landing a few feet away from him.

"Tell me again why you're living out here?"

He shrugged. "Tell me again why you're living with a bald ex-monk, a perverted old man, and talking animals?"

"Shut up."

"One of which you've fallen in love with," he continued. "My memory's not too good—was it the bald guy or the pig?"

"Hey."

"Sorry, couldn't help it. Wanna come inside?"

The interior of the cabin was considerably more comfortable, dry and clean. She had to admit to herself again that he had done quite well for himself alone. They sat by the fireplace in chairs he had fashioned after he had built the cabin.

"So what's been growing on your mind this time? Or should I say what's been growing in your belly?"

"You knew about it the last time I visited."

"Yeah, but it sure as hell wasn't that big. You're looking a bit like our old pal 19 at the moment."

"Ugh, please!" she said in disgust. "Do NOT compare me to that thing."

"Yeah so tell me sis, what's today's occasion?" he said, ignoring her insulted look. "Need me to play nursemaid when the baby pops out? Or has baldy been getting on your nerves lately?"

"Why do I need a reason to visit you? You're my brother."

"There are reasons for everything we do, 18. In case you haven't noticed."

"I don't buy that."

"Come on, don't tell me that little mind of yours isn't whirring with causalities and probabilities right now."

"…"

"Okay, I think I know the reason you've come by, even if you don't realize it yourself," he said nonchalantly. "A little bewildered by the choices you've made? Looking for affirmation that your choices are right? That there are good reasons for them all?"

"17."

"Yes?"

"Stop being a bastard."

"Okay, bastard switch is off." He smirked, resting his chin on one hand. "What's on your mind, really?"

"It's…" She fumbled for words. A rarity. "The baby's coming soon, and I…I'm not sure…I don't really know."

"Don't really know what? It's a child. You give birth to it, you raise it for a little less than two decades, and then it goes off and repeats the cycle. Not that complicated."

"According to everyone else, it is very complicated."

"'Everyone else' as in incompetent humans."

"It means a lot to Krillin."

"What did I just say?"

She frowned. "17, stop belittling him. He's my husband."

"I didn't think it was possible to belittle the guy any further than his current height."

"Would you stop it? Can you be serious for once?"

"Okay, I'm sorry. But this concern of yours isn't registering with me."

"I'm going to be a mother. And I know it's much more than just feeding and clothing a child. There's a lot more that I don't understand. Things that seem very important."

"Like what?"

"I don't know…I've heard about Son Goku's mannerisms toward his children. It seemed he was more like a child than they were when he entertained them. Is that what a parent is supposed to do?"

"Maybe it's what the father has to do," 17 shrugged. "It seems Krillin is more than capable of providing that attention."

It was not an insult this time, just the truth. "I know. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Who I'm supposed to be."

"You can't put it that way. It's not about who you're 'supposed to be.' It's about who you are. That doesn't change, 18."

She was silent for a few seconds, staring into an empty fireplace. "Then who am I, 17? Who are we?"

"You know who we are," he said, his voice tenser now.

"No. Neither of us do," she said. His cold blue eyes met her own. "We only know _what_ we are. Not who."

"Don't bring this up again…"

"It's important to me," she said. "I want to know."

"Well, all power to ya, sis. Have a fun time trying to find out," he said coldly.

"Why don't you want to know, 17? Doesn't the question ever come to your mind?"

"Sometimes. But it doesn't matter. There's no reason to find out. So why care?"

"I care now because of this," she said, placing her hand on her swollen belly. "I'm going to have to be responsible for something other than myself."

"Really? Do you really feel concern for that…the baby?" he asked, gesturing at her stomach. "Or are you just trying to convince yourself that you do?"

She was silent.

"Like I said before," he said. "We don't change. You're not going to change."

"17, I _do _care. This is my child. My creation."

"It's the result of a biological process I'm sure you're familiar with. You didn't create anything."

"Stop telling me that I can't be a mother!" she said, anger rising in her voice.

"When did I say that?"

"Everything you say tells me that!" she fumed. "I came here hoping you'd…support me or something, I don't know. I thought you'd help me understand things more clearly. I thought you might know what I'm feeling."

"I know what you feel," he said matter-of-factly. "You feel nothing. And that's the problem."

"I…"

"Am I right?" he pressed. "Don't lie to yourself."

She was silent.

"What's that cliché humans love to use? 'People don't change.' We don't change, either," he said. "Sorry if that hurts, sis, but it shouldn't."

The cabin was quiet. He had done a thorough job of sealing the walls so that very little outside noise filtered in. It felt strange to be in such an absence of sound.

"So are you going to the hospital to deliver?" he asked. His voice was no gentler, but he was consciously changing the topic.

"No," she said. "Why would I?"

"What if something goes wrong?"

"Things went wrong last time I was on an operating table."

His lips tightened into a line. "Don't bring that up…"

"Okay, I won't. Thanks for the talk, 17," she said curtly.

Krillin was as close to angry as she had ever seen him when she returned to the island. He actually raised his voice to her, demanding to know why she had been away for so long and flying around when the baby was due soon.

"Stop patronizing me, Krillin," she said coolly. "I can take care of myself."

"It's not just you I'm worried about," he protested. "Think about the baby!"

"I can take care of it too."

"18…we're in this together, right? We're both going to take care of our child. I just want you both to be safe."

"Okay, okay, look at me, I'm fine. No damage done," she said with a tinge of frustration.

He sighed, sitting down on their bed. "I love you. You know that, right?"

"I have a mental tally of how many times you've said it."

He chuckled softly. "Wish I had such a memory."

_No, you don't_.

It still confused her sometimes that those words seemed so important. That it seemed like his urgent duty to say them to her constantly. What weight did they really carry?

His tense expression melted away into a smile as he looked at her sitting beside him. She allowed him to touch her face.

"You're beautiful. You know that, right?"

Another set of words he constantly repeated to her. Sometimes she wondered which of his sayings meant more. Which one was more real.

From what she had heard, to be attracted to beauty alone was shallow. He always told her she was beautiful. He had been smitten with her from the beginning, even when she was sent to kill his best friend. And she was sure it couldn't have been anything else but her appearance that had attracted him, even leading him to save her life at the risk of everyone else's.

Was it flattering? According to her knowledge, it was not. But perhaps his love was based on other things now that they had interacted much more. She wondered why he loved her.

_There are reasons for everything_.

Her brother was probably right.

* * *

It was windier today. The sun burned bright, its rays seeming to ride the wind whipping against her skin. Her hair swirled about her face, irritating her. She sat and watched the waves.

Sometimes Krillin asked her if these long periods of inactivity were boring. He still didn't understand. Boredom was not a concept to her.

Every detail in her field of vision was captured and noted each second her eyes were open. She could count the bubbles of foam on the cresting waves and knew the intervals between the cries of each particular seagull. The tiny piece of the world within her view was almost endlessly intricate. And it changed every moment.

Perhaps it was boring to most people to simply sit and observe. She still wasn't sure what qualified as boredom.

_You feel nothing. And that's the problem._

She rested her cheek against her knees. At least she knew there was a problem. It was better than not being conscious of it.

Or was it really? Would it be better if she were unaware of the gap between what she felt at the moment and what she was supposed to feel? What was she supposed to feel anyway?

There was no foreseeable solution to this strange inner conflict, at least not yet. It didn't even register as a conflict to the logical part of her brain.

She recalled something Krillin had once said to her. _You have all the time in the world to explore that world now that you're free. Just take life one day at a time._

Seeing that there was nothing she could do about the weird nagging feeling in her mind, she supposed she would have to follow his advice. Maybe a few weeks from now, everything would be clearer, and she'd have a plan.

"Yo, aren't you cold?" Yamucha called, his voice carrying on the wind. She turned and saw him leaning out a window, waving.

"I'm fine," she replied.

"Why don't you come inside? We've got some hot tea brewing. And I'm teaching the guys a new card trick."

She rolled her eyes. There wasn't much else to do.

Halfway to her feet, something happened. She felt the difference immediately. Looking down, she saw her sand-covered stockings darkening with liquid, and it wasn't seawater.

Something inside felt different, too. Her head suddenly hurt. She staggered to one side, clutching her head in her hands and gritting her teeth. There was a new string of information processing rapidly in her brain.

"18?" Yamucha called. "You okay?"

She didn't answer. Something was happening inside her, and she did not yet know exactly what. The baby would come soon, that was obvious. But something else was going on at the same time. Turning toward the house, she began walking unevenly up the shore.

"18! Hold on, I'm coming." Yamucha disappeared from the window and was by her side in an instant. He took one look at the liquid dripping down her legs and drew in a sharp breath. "Oh boy. Okay. I did this with Bulma. I can do it again. You okay, 18?"

"I'm fine," she gritted through her teeth. "Get me to the house."

"You need to go to a hospital—"

"Get me to the house," she said harshly.

Hesitantly, he put an arm around her waist and floated off the ground, moving them toward the door. No sooner did they reach it when Krillin raced down the stairs, looking both excited and terribly anxious.

"18, my gosh, it's finally coming!" he exclaimed, supporting her as Yamucha let go. "Okay, the nearest hospital's just a few minutes away if I fly quickly. I'll—"

"I'm not going to a hospital," she said. "Get me into our room."

"What? What do you mean you're not going?" he said worriedly. "We have to—"

"Krillin, I'm not leaving this house. Get me to the bed, now," she said tensely.

"I don't understand. The doctors will help you. They'll—"

His face jerked to the side as she slapped him hard.

"Whoa, easy, 18," Master Roshi said nervously, standing beside Yamucha. He and Oolong had approached cautiously from the kitchen. She ignored him and glared directly at her husband.

"There's no way in hell you're making me walk into a hospital and let anyone touch me. I don't want to see any doctors. Do you understand me, Krillin?"

His eyes flickered with the realization of her plea thinly veiled by the form of a demand. "Okay, honey. We'll do this together, here."

She lay on the bed, gripping the edges, her face harsh and blank. She stared straight ahead at the unchanging appearance of this sparsely decorated room. The rigid lines of the wooden floorboards struck a stark contrast with the crumpled, stained sheets around her legs.

"Okay. How are we going to do this," Krillin mumbled to himself, fear etched on his face. "Do you feel it coming out?"

"Let Yamucha in here," she said, the pain of the first contraction beginning to seize her senses.

He hesitated, casting a glance at the parts of her body not covered by the sheets.

"Krillin, now is not the time to be worried about that!" she hissed. "Let him in, now!"

"I'm here, 18." Yamucha had been hovering outside the door, and now he brushed past Krillin to kneel by her side. "It's okay. All right, start taking deep breaths."

"Did…Bulma…go through it…like this?" she asked, breath hitching in her throat.

"Something like this," he said nervously. "I was with her when Trunks came, but there were doctors and nurses there too."

She turned her face away from him, shutting her eyes in pain. But it was bearable. She was built to sustain much worse than this.

"Then…do…what you saw…them doing…"

"I…I don't have any equipment or medicine, 18. I don't have any medical knowledge, either," he said helplessly.

Krillin moved to her other side and grasped her hand firmly. "We'll get through this, babe. Just breathe. Stay calm…"

"I am calm," she said, frustrated. "You're the one who needs to be calm!"

"18," Yamucha intervened. "Look at me. Okay, push. This is just the beginning, but we'll get a good start."

Puar handed him a glass of water, hovering anxiously behind his shoulder. "18, you'll be all right!" she chirped.

Yamucha set the glass on the lampstand without glancing at it. He gripped her hand harder. "Okay, this is it. Push."

"I…I can't."

"Yes you can, honey! You can do it. I'm here for you," Krillin said with urgency.

"No, Krillin," she said. She felt fluid from her eyes rolling down the side of her face onto the pillow. "I can't."

It was now clear what was happening inside her. Her body broadcast the facts quite starkly into her mind.

"What?" he said, confused. He didn't have a clue.

Her body was rejecting the baby.

Rejecting it as a hostile object.

"No…" she said quietly.

_We only know **what** we are._ _Not who._

Now it seemed that even there she had been wrong. She hadn't known what she was. What her body was, how it had been built. Or rebuilt, rather—into a finely calibrated, brutally efficient machine.

"18? What's the matter? Come on, push!" Krillin exclaimed, his face hovering inches above hers. She shut her eyes to the sight of his worried, terribly hopeful expression.

"No…"

More facts. Reality registered like a million connecting dots every second in her brain. She could not push. She could not use force. Her body wanted her to react that way. It expected her, in a survival maneuver, to push with all her unnatural might. Her internal systems had judged the simplest and most efficient way to solve the problem of the invasive entity was to terminate it while it was still inside, utilizing the natural instincts of a birthing mother as part of the process.

If she pushed…

Her body was poised to harness the resulting pressure and direct it back upward against the force she was applying downward.

She did not open her eyes or speak as the men at her side implored her to do something, to talk to them.

She could wait. But for what? The mechanics was set and inalterable. One move, and it would be over.

And the other option? To let Krillin and Yamucha bring her to the hospital, where humans clad in crisp white robes and armed with a vast array of invasive instruments would see to her. She would lie on an operating table again. She would be cut open again.

Sterile gloved hands would touch her and say everything would be better when it was over. That it wouldn't hurt at all.

That she was doing something good by offering her body on that table, that altar.

"No…"

It wasn't the same this time, she reasoned. Perhaps the baby would live if she let them operate on her.

But then what? How could she live after that? They would see inside her and know what she was, that she was not human. That she was a marvelous work of science, albeit a sacrifice of humanity. And she would be made into an experiment, a test subject, all over again.

"No…"

"18, stay with me! Yamucha, give her some water!"

"I've got it. Here, 18, drink."

She shook her head slightly, still silent.

"18, I love you," Krillin said, his voice cracking with emotion. "Don't give up now. We've come so far! You'll be holding our baby—our creation—in your arms soon. Please listen to me…you have to push!"

_It's the result of a biological process…_

_You didn't create anything._

She opened her eyes and looked at her husband. She wasn't sure if her eyes conveyed something from inside, but he froze under her gaze.

"I'm sorry, Krillin."

* * *

The lake was calm. Sunlight shimmered lazily over still water, rimmed by trees. On the other side there were birds gliding across the surface, wings spread to slow their descent.

He came, as expected.

She stared ahead, not standing or turning, and he stood at a respectful distance. She waited.

"I'll be back at the cabin," he said simply. "Come in if you want."

Time passed around her. It grew dark and the song of insects awakening to the night began. It did not matter whether she left this place or not. She did not need to go. She did not need to stay.

Her eyes traced the movements of dozens of small flickering lights across the water. Brightening, dimming, floating without direction. Some drifted close around her. She could reach out and crush one if she wanted. She could also do nothing.

She liked the ocean better. There was less to see, no trees, grass, or animals. But there was also vastly more to see, beyond even the range of her refined vision. And there were no insects, only birds.

Someone else was standing behind her.

As expected. She did not move.

"Hey." The voice was soft. She could sense its unease. She did not answer.

"18…I think it's time to go home."

"Leave," she said.

He paused, awkwardly hesitating. He wanted to move toward her but did not. She knew what he would say next.

"I'm sorry, 18…"

"You do not owe me an apology. Leave."

He did not leave. Unexpectedly, he sat down beside her, knees curled up to his chest in the same position she had assumed.

"Krillin's really worried about you, you know."

Time passed around them as neither moved or spoke after that. She could go to her brother's house. Or she could stay here. She did not care what the man beside her decided to do.

It was night, and there was no moon. The fireflies seemed more numerous than before. Their reflections glowed softly in the water.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

She turned her head toward him for the first time. The scars on his face were faintly visible in the dark.

"Why do you ask me?"

"I…I dunno. Just asking your opinion," he said, unsure what to think of her response.

"How do you know I have an opinion?"

His eyes wavered as he searched her blank expression for any hint of what she was thinking.

"It was just a comment to fill the silence. Sorry," he said, slightly defensive.

"You didn't answer my question," she said, tone still neutral.

"I don't think I understand what you were asking."

She turned back to the water. "Neither do I understand what _you_ were asking."

"Uh…about what—"

"The first question," she snapped. "The one that was supposed to 'fill the silence.'"

"Hey, it doesn't mean anything, I was just saying it's a beautiful night…"

"No," she said curtly, her gaze riveted on the fireflies. "You were asking me whether it was beautiful. And you know what? I don't know."

His puzzlement was growing into concern, she could sense it festering inside him. Slowness and stupidity were finally giving way to clarity.

"18…"

"I don't know what beauty is, Yamucha," she said. "I don't know what it is and I don't know why it matters so much to you humans."

He was silent for a moment, thinking. "It matters because it's true. Even if you can't sense it concretely, it's real."

"Why does it matter if I can't sense it? It holds no meaning for me."

"Krillin must have told you you're beautiful. Doesn't that hold any meaning?"

She looked at him, blue eyes cool and unblinking. "No. It never has."

She stood, looking down at his bewildered expression. "I am not like you. I do not understand you and all the things that matter to you. I don't know what beauty is because all I see are intricate plots of color, texture, and movement shifting every second in the lens of my eyes. I don't know what boredom is, or loneliness. I don't know what love is. I am not like you. I am not human."

He stood as well, hand extending toward her. She backed away a step in warning. "Don't touch me. Do not follow me. Leave and do not try to find me again."

"18, I'm so sorry…"

"Stop apologizing. It's a waste of breath."

"Please. Come back. Krillin needs you."

"He does not require me. I don't understand anything about him, and I can't ever understand. Just go home."

"I'm not leaving unless you come with me," he said, more firmly than before.

"Or else what?" she said.

"18, nothing is going to get better if you just avoid him. He still loves you and doesn't think badly of you for what happened."

"That doesn't matter. I realized what I am after what happened. So I can't live with him anymore. I am not what you all believe me to be. And I can't change."

"You're just as much of a person as me or him," Yamucha insisted. "Nothing can change that."

_Like I said before…We don't change. You're not going to change._

"I am not human, Yamucha," she said tensely. "My humanity was deconstructed long ago and reconstructed into a machine. A machine with very low tolerance for human beings, as you observed on the day I killed one."

"No…" he said. His voice was full of agony. "Goddammit, 18, that wasn't your fault! Stop beating yourself up over it!"

"I'm not. Really," she said. "I don't feel any guilt. There's something else, though."

A second of silence passed, filled only by the glow of fireflies around them.

"Relief."

Her gaze was unfaltering as he struggled to meet her eyes without glancing away. He finally turned his head to the side, lips set in a tight line. Perhaps finally realizing he was helpless to do anything in this situation.

"Go home, Yamucha." Perhaps her voice sounded gentle this time. "Tell Krillin not to worry about me."

She arrived at the cabin without much difficulty, knowing where it was even in the dark. The door to the cabin was slightly ajar, its edges brightly lined by the glow of the fireplace. She entered wordlessly and sat down in the empty chair beside the crackling flames.


	3. Prologue C

Prologue C

The boy missed another punch when he shouldn't have and his forward motion carried him right over his opponent's knee. A swift kick to the chest and he was down.

"You know better than to expose yourself like that. What happened to instant cleanup after mistakes?" he said gruffly. He folded his arms as Gohan stood slowly, one hand still clutching his chest as he caught his breath. His gi hadn't torn yet, but the front of it was covered with grass now.

"Sorry," he said softly, not looking at his mentor. Piccolo could see the resignation in the boy's movements as he resumed a combat stance.

"Forget about it," he said, dismissing his student's apology and the rest of their training session. He paused before his next words, wondering how he had started feeling the obligation to curb his language around Gohan. _You look and fight like shit these days_ translated roughly into, "You're tired. Take a rest."

"I can keep going," he said, but the crack in his voice signaled zero conviction. In recent months it had started changing as he made the shaky transition into pre-adulthood in the human life cycle. _Teenager,_ Piccolo knew was the word. It sounded annoying in itself.

"Do yourself a favor, Gohan. Go home and eat. And I mean eat like a Saiyan, not like a human. You've lost too much weight. Then sleep. If your mother tries to wake you up to 'study' or some bullshit, ignore her and keep sleeping."

A smile appeared on his weary face, a glimpse of the naïve five year old Piccolo had taken on as his pupil years before. But there was a twinge of guilt in that smile, probably because the boy thought it was blasphemous to be amused at the use of the word "bullshit" in relation to his mother's commands.

They left the patch of meadow considerably more intact than their other familiar training grounds. It was calming for Gohan to fly, Piccolo knew. To just fly without a certain destination, without any oncoming threats to the earth to worry about. The boy had shouldered too many burdens in his young life, and only a part of it was from fighting powerful enemies. Being airborne gave him the semblance of freedom, at least, from the leaden weights that had settled on his back since the day his mercenary uncle had arrived from outer space.

Gohan had been flying slightly ahead of his teacher, setting a rather meandering path toward his home in Mount Paozu. The sun was starting to set over the mountains in the west, casting hues of orange and hazy red across the ground far below them. Piccolo veered toward those mountains. He could sense the boy hesitated to go home, just as he seemed to be hesitating in everything else as of late. Noticing his mentor had split off from him, Gohan paused before giving up his own course and trailing the fluttering cape in front of him.

They flew quietly, the wind against their faces and the rays of the setting sun settling across the half-shut lids of their eyes. The boy used to be talkative. Piccolo had found it annoying; he was too much like his overly friendly dolt of a father, his former enemy. But now it seemed the student had become too much like the teacher. Piccolo still couldn't get used to the prolonged silences that stretched between them where there should have been conversations (though perhaps one-sided, with Gohan doing all the talking). It was not normal for the boy…and despite all the times he had told him to shut his trap, he knew it was not healthy.

Piccolo began to descend as he saw the plateau basin below them. The sunlight glimmered slowly across the vast pool of water in bright, lazy flashes. He settled into a cross-legged position right above the water's surface, adjusting his levitation technique slightly so he could sit still and unwavering. Gohan did the same a few feet away from him, questioning him with his eyes.

Piccolo broke the silence with customary bluntness. "When are you going to snap out of it, kid?"

The inquisitive look in his eyes dimmed. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitating again. A resigned sigh escaped his lips. He looked to the side, at the water, as if it held answers.

"I know it's hard," Piccolo continued. "But you're acquainted with hardship by now. It's time to move on."

"I'm sorry…"

"I don't want to hear that again. You apologize all the time without reason. What was one of the first concepts we discussed in training, Gohan?"

"A warrior should never act without reason," he mumbled.

"How are you going to live out that statement if you sound so half-assed saying it?" Piccolo questioned.

"I'm s—" he stopped the habitual phrase from leaving his mouth and raised his eyes to his mentor. "I'll change, Piccolo."

"For yourself, Gohan."

The boy said nothing.

"You have to change for your own sake. Not for me. Or your mother, or your brother."

He nodded mutely. The lack of conviction remained in every bit of his demeanor. Piccolo suppressed the urge to call him out on it.

"Don't think that you have an obligation to me or anyone else right now. It's about time you did something good for your own life instead of trying to be a hero for other people," he said, consciously taking some of the stern edge off his voice.

"I'm not trying to be a hero," Gohan said quietly. "I can't be one anyway."

The kid just took everything negatively, twisting most of what other people said into self-reproach and punishment. What a far cry the meek boy before him was from the stoic, single-minded warrior who had killed Cell.

"You're not being honest with yourself, Gohan." He tried to sound patient. "You should know your weaknesses, but also your strengths, and you have plenty of them. You know that's not a compliment because I don't give out compliments. I'm just being honest with you."

"Thanks, Piccolo." The boy smiled wearily again. "I guess I can do better than this."

"You can stop guessing for a start. Start eating and sleeping normally. Start getting out of the house more," Piccolo said. He looked at Gohan squarely in the eye. "And start letting go."

Seconds passed between them like ripples on water. Gohan's smile fell. His lean frame seemed to sigh downward toward the water's surface. Piccolo kept his gaze fixed on him.

"You know he wouldn't want you to be like this," he said in a low voice.

"I know," Gohan said softly.

"He would want you to move on," he continued more carefully.

"I know."

"So that knowledge should be an incentive to get on with your life."

Gohan lowered his head so that Piccolo couldn't see his eyes under the unruly spikes of his seldom-trimmed hair. Elbows resting on his knees, his hands hung limply near his ankles. The slouch made him look defeated, and much older.

"I guess I'm a hypocrite," the boy said, his voice slightly cracking at the end. Piccolo wondered how he would turn this thread of conversation into a self-reprisal.

"I know Dad would want me to move on," Gohan continued. "And I guess that means I should. But…I keep thinking that he had already moved on from me…from Mom and me…basically right after he died. He moved on so fast, so easily…I guess it came easy for him just like everything else did. And I resent him for that."

Gohan raised his eyes to meet his mentor's unmoving gaze. "I didn't want him to move on. I don't want to believe it was so easy for him to just let go of us, like he forgot about us or didn't really care about how bad it was…how bad it's been for us. I want to let go of that, but…if I did, it would only be out of spite. It would mean hating him. And that, I think, would hurt even more than missing him."

It surprised him how much the boy knew himself. It was almost uncanny that the child of one of the most thick-headed, intellectually challenged warriors he had ever met was so attuned to his own emotions and psyche.

_Son, I'll have to kick your ass next time I visit Heaven for doing this to your family_. Piccolo wasn't too keen on justice and family loyalty, but the indignant feeling in his gut was not going away.

"Your father wasn't perfect, Gohan," he said levelly. "You'd be wrong to idolize him like he was some flawless hero. You can't do anything to change him now. But you can change how you think about him. Don't feel guilty about resentment or hate. Face up to it."

Gohan's dull eyes seemed to flash briefly at those words. "I don't want to hate my father, Piccolo. I don't want to hate anyone. It's a horrible feeling to have."

An internal struggle with memories flickered across the boy's face. "When I was fighting Cell and ascended beyond Super Saiyan…it almost consumed me. Like hatred was part of my blood, and it was the lens through which I saw everything. I don't want to go through that again. Especially not toward my dad. I just miss him. I…"

He looked to the side, mouth set in a taut line. Piccolo did not move or speak; he just watched the boy master his emotions which threatened to flow in tears.

"I wish I could wish him back," Gohan said. He smiled again, but only one side of his mouth managed to curve upwards. "Bizarre, huh? What a useless fucking wish. Wishing for someone who didn't want to be wished back in the first place to _want_ to be wished back."

That was the first bit of cynicism, accompanied by profanity, that Gohan had ever displayed. The bitterness had been festering inside him ever since that day on Kami's lookout where Goku had refused the gift of life and the chance to return to his family. Perhaps Piccolo should have been amazed that Gohan had held in his resentment and anger for so long.

"Like I said, you can't change who your father is," Piccolo said. "Or was. Learn from it. Learn from the ways he screwed up and get on with your life."

"I'm trying," Gohan said tiredly. "It's hard, Piccolo. My mom is just…I try to help her but she…I think he hurt her even more than he hurt me, and she hasn't been dealing with it well. And there's Goten…I feel like I have to be a father to him now or something, I have to be more than just an older brother. We're low on money…I'm too young to take on a real job…"

"If you could survive kidnapping when you were five, take on the Ginyu Force and Frieza, and kill Perfect Cell, then you can get through this, Gohan," Piccolo said. He was feeling more and more like a shrink. Or maybe one of those motivational speakers. "Pull yourself together. Don't let me hear you whine about what you have to do now after all the things I've seen you accomplish."

"This is different from fighting," Gohan said. "It takes the human part of me to do this, not the Saiyan. And I realized it's much harder to be human. You have to deal with life, the crappy day-to-day reality between the all-or-nothing battles that God seems to throw at the earth to humor the last bits of Saiyan blood in the universe. But Dad seemed able to live as if it were all one reality, treated it all the same, loved fighting but loved everyday life, too. I miss that part about him—about my own life when he was around. He seemed to make life easier, brighter, more meaningful, even though we never thought about what that meaning might be. When he died, he took all that with him. Part of me went with him…and some of me still goes every day. I guess I'll have truly moved on when there's nothing more I can give up."

Piccolo looked at him for a second longer. Then he punched the boy in the jaw, snapping his head sideways.

"Since when did you start thinking it's fine to lie down and give up, Gohan?" he said bluntly. He stood from his sitting position, still hovering over the quietly rippling waves. The boy didn't touch his jaw but his eyes were watery from the unexpected blow.

"Piccolo…"

"I asked you a question," Piccolo cut in. "Did I teach you it was okay to whine and bitch about things you can't control and then sit back and piss away the time while you fail to grasp onto the things you _can_ control?

"No…" Gohan looked at his mentor without anger, but with some measure of resolution.

"Then hit me back."

The boy slowly stood, still more than an arm's length from his teacher. His eyes had cleared, and a single trail of salty fluid was drying on one cheek.

"We're finishing our training here," Piccolo said simply. "This is reality, Gohan. There aren't two of them. Perhaps you'll start realizing it when you hit me back."

They fought until the sun fully retreated behind the horizon, leaving them in the dark night air. Gohan was far stronger than he was by now, but the boy kept his power level equal to his sensei's for an even match. Even in power, but not in experience; Piccolo was far more skilled, yet Gohan held his own, to his surprise. Seconds and minutes flowed through swift punches and kicks, feints and ki shields. Neither landed a blow for what seemed like hours.

Piccolo thought he saw a brief smile flit across his student's face as Gohan finally broke through his defenses and knocked the wind out of him. It wasn't of victory…but it was the hesitant beginning of something.

* * *

The woman had an uncanny ki sense like a seasoned warrior. Maybe she had just naturally learned from being around her husband all those years when he was still alive. She didn't look up from her sewing as he stood outside the window behind her, but he knew she was aware of his presence. Something about the way her back straightened in that steel-like manner she always carried.

"My son's not here," she said curtly.

Piccolo watched her as she methodically pulled dark blue thread through the clothing laid across the table. "I know," he stated.

She turned around at that. Her eyes were cold. But as of late, it seemed she was cold toward everything, not just him.

"Then why are you here?" she asked.

_Because Son Goku is willfully dead and you are still here to resent him. Because your son sees me as more of a father than his real dad._

"Because Gohan said he'd be here soon," he replied nonchalantly.

She stared at him for two seconds longer, her expression giving away nothing. Then she turned her back to him again and resumed her sewing.

Minutes passed as the needle went through the cloth over and over, and both of them were silent. Droplets of rain began falling, the beginning of a shower.

Another minute passed before she reluctantly broke the silence. "Get in the house before your clothes soak through and I change my mind."

They sat across from each other at the rather small kitchen table. Piccolo wondered briefly how she had managed to feed two Saiyans when the table could probably hold only five plates at a time.

"You should be mending this," she said huffily, gesturing with needle in hand toward the dark blue gi on the table. "God knows how often it's been torn while you were roughing up my son."

"Afraid I can't be of much assistance." Along with her ki sense, the woman had the innate ability to piss anyone off with a combination of a few choice remarks. This was probably the first one in a combo, but he'd be damned if he let himself be affected by her acidity.

"That's right, none of you big strong men are ever useful outside of a global state of emergency." Number two.

"As former guardian of the earth, I can send down some calamities if you'd prefer to see us doing something productive," he countered smoothly.

"And use it as an excuse to whisk Gohan off and make him fight for his life? I'd prefer never to see that again."

"He can take on any homegrown catastrophe by now, you should know that. Your son is the strongest fighter among us, after all."

She glared at him and made a "hmph" sound that human females seemed to employ when they were annoyed and couldn't think of anything to say. Especially when he had responded to her attack with an indirect compliment.

He changed the topic. "Where's your other son?"

She gave him a suspicious look as if he were going to force the infant into wilderness training like he had with five year-old Gohan. Paranoid woman.

"He's upstairs sleeping," she said.

He tapped the table surface absentmindedly with the long-nailed fingers on his right hand. "Behaving well?"

"Well enough," she said.

"Have a big appetite?"

"What kind of question is that? Of course, he's got his father's blood," she said. Her voice grew more cynical with those last words.

He took care to say his next words in the same indifferent tone as before. "Does he have enough to eat?"

She looked at him sharply. The woman might have been extremely insensitive, but she was very smart and calculating. In her eyes he could already see the unspoken rejection of his unspoken offer.

"You came here to wait for Gohan," she said. "You know where he is right now?"

He was silent.

"In the city," she continued. "Finding a job so he can be useful and help his family, unlike everyone else he's been hanging around all these years."

It seemed she was almost done mending the garment. She paused as she accidentally pierced her finger with the needle. Before blood could appear, she pressed her lips to the cut.

"So he can grow up to be a successful man with a stable career and financial security," she said in an adamant tone, as if this were all in a booklet she had written. "And Goten will be the same way."

He considered her carefully before speaking again. She was quick to lose her temper and fanatically protective of her children, but she was a strong woman, and he judged she wouldn't fly into a blind rage if he went back to his earlier point.

"I asked a question about the present, not the future," he said. "Does he—and you and Gohan—have enough to eat right now?"

She somehow looked surprised, offended, and perhaps grudgingly impressed that he dared to persist in asking about their wellbeing. "We're fine," she said, raising her chin in a gesture of defiance.

He suppressed the urge to tell her she had become too pale and too thin to be considered "fine." Instead, he stood wordlessly and began opening the cabinets and drawers behind them one by one. She dropped the needle and thread to stop him halfway as he reached for the drawer below the sink.

She gripped the wrist of his hand on the drawer handle, grasping it with surprising strength for a human. He looked down at her coolly as her face flushed with embarrassment and indignation.

"How dare you—"

"Do the rest of the cabinets look like these?" he asked pointedly, waving with his free hand at the rows of empty and near-empty shelves he had exposed.

"This is my house! How dare you touch anything without my permission!" she fumed, tightening her grip on his wrist as if she willed the bones to snap.

"This doesn't look 'fine' to me," he said, ignoring her angry words. "It looks like you aren't doing—"

"Don't tell me things aren't 'fine!'" she cut in sharply. "Don't you dare tell me I'm not already doing the best I can. I've slaved away all these years for this family and _I _will decide what doing 'fine' means!"

"Clear your head, Chichi, and understand that I'm not playing offense here; I'm not insulting you, though there're plenty of things I could say to do just that," he said brusquely. "I'm telling you that you—and your sons, more importantly—need help. You need to stop denying it. They depend on you to put their lives above your own pride."

"You don't think I've given up everything I can for them?!" She was getting hysterical. Piccolo almost sighed; was there a way to stop her before she totally lost it? "You think I haven't been putting my children first before everything, including my own life?!"

"Your life, yes," he said, consciously trying to sound more conciliatory. "But what about your pride? You can starve yourself while you give all the food in the house to your sons, but what happens when it runs out? Will you still refuse to ask for help just to preserve your pride?"

She looked furious, but also afraid now. She was mad because he had gone too far into her family affairs, but she was fearful because he was forcing her to confront her own weakness. Her grip on his wrist loosened. She glared hatefully at him still.

"Gohan will get a job and will make more than enough to feed us. We don't need your help or anyone else's," she spat.

"Gohan isn't old enough to be legally employed," Piccolo said bluntly. "He needs to go to school, not start working some dead-end illegal job."

Another insult to her pride. From when Gohan could first talk, she had instituted an extremely demanding, borderline tyrannical education plan to turn him into an accomplished scholar. His education was the primary competitor with his training. It represented the one area of his life she still had control over, the part of his humanness that she adamantly refused to relinquish to the Saiyan part of his nature. And now Piccolo was reprimanding her for holding Gohan back from his education which she had fought so long and hard for.

"There are people willing to help you if you'd just step down from your pedestal and notice," he continued. "You don't need to—"

He froze as she did something completely unexpected.

She burst into tears and made an almost inhuman noise that sounded like a sob. Yanking her hand away from his wrist, she retreated to the table, snatching the newly mended gi and tearing it in half. He took in a breath and prepared for an onslaught of profanity Gohan had probably never imagined his mother was capable of.

It didn't come. She threw the ripped pieces of the gi to the floor and sat down heavily in a chair, covering her face with her hands as angry tears flowed from bloodshot eyes, her breathing reduced to wheezing rasps.

He forcefully pushed down the brief surge of panic he felt at this rather drastic turn of events. At the moment he would rather be fighting Frieza in third form again than deal with a hysterically crying human female.

With deliberate slowness, he sat down across the table from her, feeling a sizable amount of awkwardness. He said nothing for a minute as she held her face in her hands still, breath hitching in her throat with each sob. He amended his earlier thought. He would rather be hit with a full blast from Nappa again than sit through another minute of this.

Clearing his throat audibly, he reached across the table, his hand stopping an inch above her shoulder in hesitation. He could withdraw his arm now and wouldn't have to touch her, and wouldn't have to deal with her reaction to his touching her—after all, at the moment she couldn't see the hand poised above her shoulder. He cursed the nice conscience he had acquired from Kami; he could almost hear the old man chuckling as he nixed his copout plan and patted Chichi on the back.

She jerked back almost violently, glaring at him with reddened, puffy eyes. He wondered how Son Goku had put up with this hideous version of his wife, and how often he had had to face her in this form.

"Don't touch me," she snapped, swiping at her tears with one sleeve. "I don't need your pity."

He returned her glare with equal intensity. "I don't need to deal with your pitiful crying."

"Get out of my house then. I should never have invited you in. Get out and don't expect to see Gohan. We don't want anything to do with you."

"'We?' It's for Gohan to decide whether he wants to see me. If _you_ don't want to see me again, fine," he shot back.

He stood from the chair and looked down at her for a long hard moment. Then he picked up a piece of ripped fabric from the floor. He caught her hands before she could hit him, and carefully wiped the tears still trailing down her cheeks as she sputtered in indignation.

He had to catch one of her hands again as soon as he had released both of them; she was trying to hit him. _No good deed goes unpunished_, he thought.

"What the hell is wrong with you? I'm trying to help you!" he shouted in frustration.

"I told you I don't want your help!" she gritted out.

"For God's sake, calm down and think for a moment! You can't do this alone! Gohan and Goten need you to be totally honest with yourself. You have to face reality, Chichi."

"I—"

"Your sons need you to."

The strength seemed to seep out of her at last as her shoulders fell into a slump and she turned away from him, staring intently at the floor. He folded his arms and stood beside her, waiting. There was a welcome silence for a short while.

"You want to help, but you can't," she said in a different tone of voice. It was quiet and dead. "Even the Dragonballs can't."

She looked up at him, a tear running down her face which was now blank. "The problem isn't food. Or money. It's a broken family."

Gohan's cynical half-smile had looked just like the expression on her face now. "He doesn't want to come back even though we have the power to bring him back. And even if he did come back and stayed for good, nothing could erase what's happened. The knowledge of it, that he chose to stay dead over staying here with his family, will always be there to separate us."

She paused and took the torn, wet piece of cloth Piccolo had dropped on the table, absently curling it around her hand. "Sometimes I wonder why…why it all came down to this. Why he always leaves and the pain stays."

She held the patch of fabric in her hands, considering it for a moment. "Gohan once wore his father's surname proudly as an emblem. Now he bears no name on his gi."

They both sensed the boy's presence at the same moment, turning their heads in time to see him disappear up the stairs to his room. He hadn't even noticed how long Gohan had been there watching and listening.

She looked at Piccolo again with her cold eyes. _He doesn't bear your name on his gi anymore either_, they seemed to say.

* * *

The air was thinner, the sky clearer above the clouds. The wind kept the myriad tiles on this platform cold, and the sun gleamed off them in brilliant white. He sat quietly, realizing this was the longest time he had ever taken trying to sink into meditation. Imminent threats to the earth hadn't weighed on him as heavily and persistently as this. Perhaps because there had always been other warriors, those stronger than he, who would inevitably shoulder most of the burden.

Dende and Popo had wisely left him alone upon his arrival, probably noticing that the usual indifferent look on his face was different this time. He sat with his eyes open, staring into the sky before him. This view had more or less stayed the same through his entire life, and probably had been the same since this lookout was first constructed.

The strings in his consciousness that were tied to the Dragonballs were humming lightly. Most of the time he didn't hear the flitting pulse of their connection. Only when he was still, and simplified his world down to this—a view of the sky and even breaths—did he feel the bond alive and inside.

He hadn't offered the son or the mother the thought of using the Dragonballs. He had only offered help with his own hands and the resources of their circle of friends. The Dragonballs were useless in this case, he knew. He just hadn't expected they had known too, and so clearly. Perhaps they had brooded over the matter as much as he had…no, that was impossible.

Although he didn't constantly feel the presence of the Dragonballs, he did constantly think about their existence. How they had been made. How his people, out of all the sentient races in the universe, had made them. Why they had wanted to make them in the first place. How the Dragonballs came to have such power—power that was vast and dangerous, but also so limited. They could turn insignificance into tyranny, poverty into plenty, and death into life. But they couldn't heal pain, erase hatred, or violate free will.

It was Goku's free choice to reject a wish for life. Even if he had made the wrong choice, it was not within the power of the Dragonballs to stop him from making it.

So that begged the question again: what was the purpose of the existence of the Dragonballs? To save the poor and hungry? To heal those who suffered disease and calamity? To bring back loved ones from death? What was the point, if all people would die in the end anyway, no matter how many years the Dragonballs added to their lifespan? Or if Frieza had succeeded in wishing for immortality—what would have been the point? To rule over a universe that would also eventually decay and perish? All things led to death; it seemed life itself was an anomaly, like the Dragonballs, as they both stood in stubborn defiance of death.

Perhaps the things the Dragonballs _couldn't_ change were the things that really mattered. Love, hate, healing, and pain. And free will. Perhaps they were stronger than the pulse of life itself, because they could not be altered by the fickle wishes of mortals or even changes in the very fabric of time-space.

His meditative trance was broken in a split-second as he felt something flicker to life beside the thread connecting him to the Dragonballs. A distinct alien presence, yet familiar in a very disconcerting way. He closed his eyes and tried to pinpoint where it was…if it were even in the physical plane.

It was. His eyes snapped open. It was growing in power—in the West Capital…close beside it was the angry flame of Vegeta's ki, actually _struggling_ to rise, and failing…

And then it was gone. Just gone. Like it had never been there at all. Vegeta's ki rose again in his customary rage in addition to bewilderment. So the Saiyan had come across someone, or something strangely more powerful than he. But he could no longer sense it—

No. It had appeared again, but it had changed. It was…not on Earth any longer. He furrowed his brows in concentration. It somehow could exist in both the physical plane and in the realm beyond that, to which the Dragonballs were tied. It could be in the next solar system, or it could be a galaxy away…he did not know. Physical measurements of distance did not apply in the dimension beyond the current world in which they lived and breathed.

He stood, sensing Dende approaching with concerned footsteps.

"Yeah, I felt it, kid." Piccolo looked upwards into the expanse of blue and the faint glimmer of stars beginning to appear as the day drew toward dusk. "I'm going to find out what it is."


	4. Conditioned 1:  Conceptions

CONDITIONED

Chapter 1: Conceptions

He opened his eyes to the vast darkness above him punctuated by the cold stars. The newly arrived presence near him did not move.

"Quite bold, Namek, to tread so close to a sleeping Saiyan," he said, stretching his arms out behind his head. The grass prickled his skin.

"Good evening to you too, Vegeta," came the gruff reply from his left side. "I see you have plans for spacefaring."

"Yes, you could say that," he said calmly. The ship was fully prepared for launch.

"Care to share what exactly you plan to do?"

Vegeta closed his eyes. "Did Bulma send you?"

A bark of laughter, tinged with surprise. "She hasn't spoken to me since the last time I showed my face around here and made Trunks cry."

A half-smile curved his lips. "Then why do you care to know?"

"I suppose that even if this were a routine training mission, you wouldn't tell me, just to be a jackass."

"You know me quite well, Namek."

"As a matter of fact, Vegeta, I know what you are planning to do."

He opened his eyes and sat up slowly. Turning his head upwards and to the side, he met the Namek's slanted eyes under the white turban he customarily wore. So the presence of the priest had not been hidden after all.

"Then you know that this is my concern and mine alone," he said, injecting the first drop of venom into his voice.

"The last time you regarded a dire concern as yours alone, the Earth suffered for it." The cool reply was an intended barb.

"Careful, Namek," Vegeta said in a low voice, bristling at the reminder of his recent failures.

"What was it?" Piccolo cut in. "What was that strange power you encountered?"

"None of your business." He stood and turned toward the ship.

"Anything that can subdue a Saiyan and then blink out of this Earth's atmosphere is most certainly my business."

The Namek could definitely sense the ki gathering in his fists as he paused with his back turned. Piccolo must have prepared himself for a beating before coming here to confront him this night.

"I'm not saying I would have been able to overpower whatever that thing was. In fact I might not have come out of it alive." The Namek was backpedaling to cover his offenses. Protecting his own skin.

No, Vegeta knew, it was not about self-defense. The Namek was not afraid of him. He just wanted information, and he figured Vegeta would more likely give him information if he didn't drive him into a rage. Transparent, as usual. But Vegeta would still tell him nothing.

"Obviously you came out of it alive and unscathed," Piccolo continued. Vegeta began walking toward the door of the ship.

"Did it track you down? What was its purpose for coming to Earth?" The Namek was certainly persistent.

Vegeta kept walking. The footsteps following him were expected.

"Why didn't it kill you when it could have?" Employing reverse tactics now.

Vegeta paused and turned his head just enough to see the Namek out of the corner of his eye. "Nice try. I won't take the bait."

He opened the door to the ship, a new sleek model meant for speed travel, and stepped inside. There was nothing Piccolo could do to stop him. He smiled at the green man still standing on the lawn as the door slid shut.

_This is my concern, Namek. And my kill._

* * *

_There was once a child._

_Many prophecies were given at his birth. They foretold that the child would see greatness, surpassing all who came before him and all who would ever live thereafter._

He stared into the endless cold abyss surrounding him. Specks of stars far, far away stayed still as his ship hurtled past nearer bodies. Every few minutes, his view would turn completely white. The navigation system automatically sensed wormholes in the fabric of space, ripping through them conveniently to jump ever closer to his chosen destination.

The blank sea of white before his eyes filled with the blackness of space as he exited the latest spatial shortcut. Legions of stars seemed to blink to life as his eyesight adjusted once more to the dark.

He had seen greatness. His own power now indeed far surpassed that of all those of his race who had lived before him. He had achieved the status of the Legendary, meant to be worshipped and exalted and feared. Meant to rule over all the stars for eternity, as written in ancient folklore.

How ironic that no one of his race remained to worship and exalt him, save one man who had actually laid claim to the Legendary power before he had.

The prophecies were a lie. He had not surpassed _all_. That one man, now dead, had single-handedly silenced the mouths of prophets in their graves and had driven one more twisted nail into the coffin of his people. That one man had usurped his throne and his destiny without even aspiring for them.

It was useless to be so poisonously bitter. It was useless to hate and burn with anger toward a man who was already dead, whom he could no longer challenge in single combat to reclaim his honor. It was utterly useless to think about it still.

Except he had to.

He had to pick apart every word the priest had said, every uncanny piece of information he had heard in the confines of a wooden confessional. He had to know what was waiting for him at his current destination, the place he presumed was the "place of origin."

_At the age of five, the child was tested for the first time._

"Tested" indeed.

His nails dug into his palms, carving small mocking smiles into his skin. He imagined such a smile on an invisible face, a wash of white blankness covering all features except thin, curved lips as dark as the universe.

Here he was, on a ship hurtling through space to find one man among the countless stars surrounding him. A man who knew too much and perhaps was not a man at all. The balance sheet was never completely negative, however. Vegeta always calculated the good, or the acceptable, that could come out of situations such as this.

Perhaps this endeavor was an affirmation that he should have left Earth long before. He should never have involved himself in the affairs of such an insignificant backwater planet. After his revival on Namek, he had left Earth to search for Kakarott. What a blind fool he had been. Instead of scouring the galaxy for that harmless idiot, he could have been carving a new empire from the chaotic power vacuum that had resulted from Frieza's fall. Or he could have waited until the arrival of his son from the future—the boy had killed the other remaining threat from Frieza's lineage, leaving his empire wide open for the taking as well. At that time, he could have gained real power and unified two great empires under his own vast strength. Instead, when he had ventured into space again, it was not to conquer but to train, striving toward the singular goal of surpassing Kakarott.

What a fool he had been.

The mundane, bloodless life Earth offered him had almost secured its hold on him. He had a woman and a child. He had allies, though his ties with them were tentative. For the first time, he had begun waking up each morning assured that he would still be alive the next morning. There were no battles, no risks, no danger of death.

Yet humans were so fascinated by those things that had been intimately tied to his reality for his entire life. They were utterly terrified of death. Their civilization was built upon staving off death and fabricating excuses for the existence of its very concept. Humans seldom saw death around them, yet it always loomed over them as some evil entity. They could not conceive of it as anything but evil and attached superstition and supernatural concepts to it.

Humans believed in a god and a devil, and they exalted and feared death. And between these entities they placed a concept called "sin."

The mundane life that had been slowly creeping over him lost its hold the day he had aimlessly stepped into that hollow, dimly lighted house of worship. He had been seeking amusement indeed, and perhaps a bit of enlightenment on why humans feared and hated death –and sin– so vehemently. The billions he had slain on purging missions, the countless revenge killings and assassinations, and the array of cruel torments he had carried out on his victims often for fun (or out of boredom), not to mention the designs he once had for immortality and becoming the despot of a new empire, surely earned him a place over the "worst" human who had ever lived. He had read histories of genocides and "crimes against humanity," a term he thought was rather artful and self-righteous. Some crimes indeed had been horrible in their degree of cruelty, duration of pain inflicted, and number of victims, but each criminal had inevitably been caught and either locked away or punished with death. Yet Vegeta was convinced there were no humans in the rather short history of their civilization who could compare with him.

The priest had thrown the beginnings of that mundane life off balance.

Perhaps it was another "test" in the course of his blood-soaked, battle-mired life. A challenge of wits, a test to see how far he would go for the "answer" the priest spoke of. But the priest had failed to pique his interest in any supernatural concept of sin or death beyond curiosity and the desire for amusement. He had, after all, seen and experienced the afterlife firsthand, which was a mocking joke of any religion's concept of heaven or hell. Vegeta was not interested even in the idea that the real reason for killing was always choice. It was merely an overloaded, useless philosophical concept that moralists must have deduced in order to add weight to an individual's guilt over his own sins.

The real point of their dialogue had been to draw him into space. Vegeta was convinced of this. The priest was waiting for him somewhere. Perhaps for a confrontation to settle a score. Perhaps this man was some long-forgotten specter of his past who had finally tracked him down and wanted revenge. But then, he could have taken his revenge at any time during their conversations in the confessional, as he had displayed his sizable power at their last meeting. His powers were indeed potent and quite intriguing, but Vegeta had encountered similar types in his years as a soldier. He just had to be more careful and clever in order to overpower and kill such a warrior.

If not revenge, then what?

Why tell such a story, inject some philosophical nonsense, and then disappear? Perhaps it was a more elaborate plot for revenge involving some particular location in the galaxy? Perhaps it involved more than just that one man? There were many possibilities, he supposed.

There were several things he was certain of.

The priest knew too much about him. First, he had somehow known Vegeta would walk into that church although he had done it more on a whim than anything. He had known of the Arlian genocide and Nappa's death before Vegeta had mentioned them. He seemed to have known how Vegeta would answer all his questions, and even what questions Vegeta would ask him.

And he had known the story.

For that alone, Vegeta could not let him live. For the days or weeks he had been on this ship, he had scoured the walls of his memory, in anger and in calm, tearing out the buried corpses of his past, walking as far back into the catacombs as he could, reminding himself that he had plenty of time to discover who this man was. It was frustrating not to know, if there indeed was something in his memory that could help him.

It was one thing to know about the destruction of Arlia or the death of Nappa. Independent purges done by individual soldiers, some of them outside official orders, were often the topic of the night in the mess halls of Frieza's ships and checkpoints throughout the empire. News of Nappa's death, although less significant, would also have spread quite quickly, given the blatant fact Vegeta had come back from his mission to Earth alone.

But Vegeta had personally seen to those who knew of the story the priest had told.

All those in the story were dead, killed in battle or by Vegeta's own hand. They had taken the details of what had happened to their graves. Many others knew the general premise, but their conceptions of it were not as accurate as the priest's retelling.

So how did the man know?

* * *

He had expected to feel something upon arriving here. Most likely anger or hate. Or perhaps foolish sentiment, as several years on Earth were bound to rub off on him.

He felt nothing. The planet loomed large before him, cold and void of life. A deserted wasteland, emptied of resources and its indigenous population long ago. It was the color of dried blood.

He waited. He had patience. Years of tedious, uneventful travel in space pods had built up his tolerance for inactivity and isolation. He had discovered long ago that his own mind was enough of an intrigue to explore and thus pass the time. Of course, he did not expect to wait more than several hours to meet the man who had drawn him out here. He was fairly certain this was where he was supposed to go.

The first hour ticked by. He recounted the words of the story patiently. They were ingrained in his brain now. The impeccable memory he had acquired from the rigorous mental training he had to undergo as a soldier would not allow him to forget a single word. He sat down on the floor beside the viewing window, gazing at the rust-colored planet.

_He was handed over to the enemy by his people. _

The second hour arrived. He had indeed been handed over to the enemy, by his own father in fact. He wondered why he had longed for his people and the empire that was rightfully his for so many years, when they had abandoned him long before. Perhaps if his people were still alive and he was their ruler, he would eventually cause their demise anyway out of revenge. Perhaps he would have ruled them just as cruelly as the tyrant they had given him over to, because he could never forgive them for betraying him.

_He was kept in a holding cell like a common criminal and did not eat or drink for many days._

The third hour. At this point in the story, he had begun to seethe inside, knowing that the priest knew many things he was not supposed to know. The priest had mockingly crafted his words to sound like a tale from a religious text, free of the gritty details but full of ludicrous moral undertones.

He remembered his time in that holding cell quite clearly. It had reeked of sweat and body odors of aliens he had never encountered, former prisoners who had probably died in recent days. He had been told by the guards to consider it a luxury that he had the cell to himself, as it customarily held upwards of ten prisoners. He had waited, incensed at the numerous affronts to his dignity as Saiyan royalty, but had remained patient, not killing anything other than the rats scurrying around the dark confines of his cell. There had been one window where he could see the planet over which the flagship was stationed. It was the color of dried blood.

He had waited out of trust in his father, who had told him this was the best opportunity for him to grow stronger—to train in the imperial army of Frieza. To grow stronger for his people, for the throne he would one day inherit.

Bullshit.

_On the tenth day he was taken from his cell into the presence of the enemy._

The fourth hour. When the priest's maddeningly calm, emotionless voice had reached this sentence, any last doubts about the identity of the child in the story were gone. No members of royalty were detained that long in such conditions, except as a confirmation that they were no longer considered royalty, and that their planet was most likely no longer considered sovereign. The duration of those ten days had been torture in itself, as he had begun eating the half-rotted carcasses of the rodents he had killed, his child's body shriveling to skin and bones without food or water. He was lying on the floor when the door finally opened, and could not move fast enough to avoid the kick aimed at his head.

He came to in a massive hall even bigger than his father's throne room. He lay on cold marble, raising his head to see a garishly embellished throne, where he met the eyes of a tyrant for the first time.

_He was told that his people and his king were no more, and that he would now bow down and obey a new king._

The fifth hour.

His worst fears had been confirmed. Even at the age of five, he had known that there was something wrong with the egregious treatment he had received from his captors. Even if Vegetasei were to become a tributary state or even a slave state, there was no way Frieza would imprison and starve the Saiyan prince. Only if both his father and his planet had fallen would this be possible.

Later, he would learn that nothing was beyond Frieza's cruelty. The breach of propriety in relations with the Saiyan throne was a nicety compared to what the tyrant was capable of.

_The child refused._

The sixth hour. Vegeta stood and paced before the viewing window as the blood-colored planet slowly spun before him. This place…this place was starting to get to him. He cursed the man for making him wait. Or perhaps this was not the right place after all. He took a deep breath. He would continue to wait until the story wore itself out in his head and he could no longer bear being here.

He had refused to bow. He remembered thinking in his juvenile mind that if he had had any saliva in his parched mouth, he would have spit at Frieza's feet. He had tried to stand and run, without a plan and without rational thought, as he imagined Frieza blasting a hole through his father's heart and then setting his planet to burn, the empire he would inherit reduced to a lifeless ball of ash.

_The order was given that he should be beaten until he obeyed._

The seventh hour. The priest's wording had made it seem like a passive process, a turn of events that had naturally and inevitably come about. He had made it sound like some nameless third party, the indifferent hand of Fate, perhaps, had given the order for the prince to be beaten.

He sometimes wondered how the real events in embellished stories in ancient books and religious texts had actually played out. How much violence, slaughter, and suffering were left untold between the lines of passive narration, moral dogma, and divine purpose? "Beating" was far from adequate to describe what Frieza had ordered. The word "beating" did not bring to mind the fervent wish for death that victims of Frieza experienced.

_For one day and one night, six soldiers carried out the order in shifts._

The eighth hour. Vegeta rubbed his sore eyes, tired from staring blankly at the black void and the unmoving pinpricks of light. Perhaps this was the wrong place. But how could it be? It had seemed so obvious that this would be it.

He remembered his tormentors' faces. Later he would learn their names and ranks and feel a sick sense of pride at the fact that Frieza had expended the efforts of his top soldiers on him at five years of age. He would kill some of them many years later and savor the moment he blasted each into oblivion or tore out their hearts. But because of constraining circumstances, he had accorded them more mercy than he had received in the speed of the pain he had inflicted upon them, and this was still a point of regret.

_One broke his bones, another tore his skin, still another dislocated his limbs, and so on, until he could no longer move or resist._

The ninth hour. He opened a capsule containing meat and began eating ravenously. As he had retreated into the priest's words and his own memories, he had forgotten his hunger. He had encapsulated a freezer full of raw meat, which he had often eaten before Bulma had demanded he start cooking it. The blood was cold and congealed, but he savored the taste of it as he ripped chunks out of the steak with his teeth.

They had mangled his flesh as if he were nothing more than a piece of dead animal to be carved up and devoured. Broken bones and dislocated limbs were clean words, jarringly out of sequence with the memory of the pain. They had started slow, knowing they could do whatever they wanted to him because he was so weak from starvation and dehydration. But the priest was right. Each had "specialized" in a certain form of torture. For years afterward, each time he had run across one of them he had had to forcefully suppress the sick sensory memory of the excruciating pain of skin and flesh being sliced off his body, or of bones cracking as his fingers were bent backwards.

_At the end of the ordeal he was thrown on his face before the enemy in a mocking semblance of prostration._

The tenth hour. The priest was not coming. Vegeta methodically cleaned his hands with a small purifying device on the wall which Bulma had installed in all of Capsule Corp's ships. The scent of blood vanished from his fingers, but the pungent smell remained in his mind. It had been the first time he had seen his own blood in such quantities, flowing out from his veins, splattering the walls, adorning his tormentors' hands and faces. He remembered his fury at the sight of their smiles, when they licked their lips to taste his blood. They were not worthy of spilling the blood of a son of Vegetasei. They were not worthy of drawing breath in his presence, least of all the tyrant who had smiled down upon his broken, powerless form from his throne.

_The enemy stood from his throne and, approaching the paralyzed body of the child, said,_

"_You have obeyed. But now, you will learn to obey."_

The eleventh hour. He had stopped the priest's narration there with a curse and a failed attempt to shatter the wooden panel separating them.

Vegeta entered a command into the ship's computer to expand its shield several meters beyond the metal exterior of the ship. He then walked to the hatch, opened it, and stood still as a moving circular platform lifted him slowly into the cold of space. The invisible force field of the ship hummed around him, ending perhaps a meter in front of his face. His kept his breathing light; the expanded shield was there to provide him with oxygen, but it would only hold out for a limited time.

He extended his arm, looking down coldly at the planet looming beneath him. He decided he had reached the point where he could no longer bear being in this place. This planet –the same one that had graced his window throughout those ten days of imprisonment– would have to go.

Because he had chosen to destroy it.

He felt intense anger. But of course that feeling could not be the reason for the action he had decided upon.

Then again there was no point in annihilating the planet. This solar system was dead, unoccupied, lifeless. The act of destroying a planet would accomplish nothing, even if the sight of it angered him deeply.

Perhaps there was logic to the priest's philosophical assertions after all. He could release the energy he held in his palm, or he could power down and leave the planet intact. Either way held no consequences for him. So which path to choose, action or inaction? In this case, neither seemed to be a true path of action. Both were meaningless.

The choice was arbitrary, but it was nonetheless a choice consciously made.

As he watched the planet glow and split apart beneath him, he was oddly reminded of an earlier time in his life when he had done the same out of either fun or boredom. This time, it was out of neither.

"The power of choice" indeed.


	5. Constructed 1: Confession

CONSTRUCTED

Chapter 1: Confession

One week. They had spoken scarcely ten times. Each time, he had been the one to break the silence. She supposed she should be thankful for his patience with her; he was accommodating her presence without much conversation or any known plan for how long she would live with him. Or perhaps he was just indifferent, and patience was not a relevant factor between them.

He was tolerant of her. Perhaps that was easy enough; during most of the day he was away from the cabin and did not return until evening, and she never asked about what he did to occupy his time. Once, she followed him wordlessly as he took the hunting rifle that hung on the back wall and entered the woods in silence. He flew low through the trees, and he only turned back to raise a finger to his lips, signaling for her to stay quiet. A few minutes later he shot a deer through the neck and spent the next hour skinning and cleaning it back at the cabin. She wondered why he bothered with this. He could have used ki and diminished the mess significantly. He could also easily steal food from the nearby town. He glanced at her once as his hands were covered with blood, seeming to find amusement in the look of distaste on her face. He probably knew she was mildly curious at his behavior but didn't feel it was worth the effort to ask him about it. She didn't have to try to understand certain actions of his. She knew what he was, that they were the same, and that nothing would change.

She was quiet as they lay beside each other on his bed, which was just large enough for the comfort of two. They usually fell asleep around the same time, close to midnight, and seldom moved in their sleep. It was the end of one week. Her time here so far had been uneventful and routine. She expected it would continue to be this way until he dreamed up some scheme to amuse them as he had when they had first emerged from Gero's lab. She wondered if this life was amusing for him, if some of his curiosity about humans was satisfied by this strange life he had built for himself. Perhaps she would begin to like it, or at least appreciate it, if he did.

One minute before they usually fell asleep, he spoke. "So what are you thinking?"

A few seconds passed before she answered. "Not much."

"Liar," he said with a chuckle. "Every moment we're awake, we think. You're thinking many things right now."

"Fine." She rolled her eyes. "I'm thinking about how you seem to enjoy pointing out minor discrepancies in what I say and do."

"I'm the only one who can point them out, 18. Not saying you need to fix them or anything, though."

"Oh, of course. If I fixed them, life would be even less interesting than it is now."

"Finally feeling bored?" he asked softly. "Was it any better before?"

She did not reply for a minute. "It was different," she said vaguely.

"I see." A brief pause. Then, "Do you miss it?"

This was the first time he had said anything about the life she had recently left behind. She supposed he had been respectfully refraining from mentioning anything for a week, which he had probably judged as sufficient time for her to...to what? Come to terms with herself? Recover from shock? He knew the extent of her mind and body's capabilities, he knew that she was not a piece of emotional porcelain like many human women. But perhaps he hadn't stayed silent out of courtesy. Perhaps it was out of indifference.

"No," she said after another pause. "I don't."

"Well," he said, turning on his side to face her. "What about them missing you?"

"What about them?" she said, tilting her head just slightly to meet his eyes. "They know what I've done and what I am, and they know they can't do anything about it. They must realize that missing me doesn't serve any purpose."

The corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. "You know that humans do a lot of things without purpose."

"I suppose so."

"They like to think everything has a purpose, though," he said with a sigh. "Even the weather. As if some supernatural force would send rain over an entire nation just to appease one poor farmer. Curious, isn't it? Humans must be so insecure."

She thought of Krillin. "Yes, they are insecure. About many absurd things."

"Isn't it interesting, 18, that everything for us once had a purpose? To kill Son Goku?" he said with a short laugh.

"Yeah, well it seems we didn't serve our purpose too well," she said dryly.

"What would it have been like if we had killed him, you think?" he asked.

"We'd be here in this cabin, having a conversation like this anyway. Maybe a year ago instead of now."

"Really?" His cold blue eyes seemed to glimmer faintly in the moonlight. "You don't think we would have created some other purpose for our lives? Kill some more humans, maybe conquer the planet?"

"Why would we?" she said, slightly puzzled at his reasoning. "We would have accomplished what we were programmed to do, and there would be no point in pursuing any other objectives after that."

"But do you think we have a purpose right now, 18?"

"Why are you asking these questions? No, I don't think we have a purpose. We didn't meet our first objective and we didn't make any new ones afterward."

"If Son Goku were alive now, would you try to kill him?"

She wondered what he was thinking. "No, I wouldn't. There would be no point."

"But there wasn't really a point in the first place, was there?"

"We were programmed to kill him."

"But that programming was written by a human desiring revenge. Gero invented a purpose for our lives..."

"Just as human beings often invent purpose for their own lives?" she finished for him. "And so that makes us not much different from ordinary humans? What's your point?"

He smiled. "There is no point."

She stuffed a pillow in his face. "Loser. Go to sleep already."

Their eyes snapped toward the door at the same time. Someone was knocking.

"Looks like one of your old friends is coming to visit," he said, rather annoyed.

"I told them not to try to find me," she said, narrowing her eyes as she wrapped her blanket around herself and walked across the room. She opened the door, ready to close it again in a minute or so.

It was not anyone she expected.

"18. Please help me," Bulma said, her face pale and drawn in the moonlight.

* * *

She looked at her brother as Bulma finished speaking. He was leaned forward in his chair, face propped in his hands. Flames crackled in the fireplace beside them, outlining his profile in a faint glow.

He returned her look with his own. _ What are you looking at me for?_

Bulma must have noticed the wordless interaction between them. "17, I would welcome you too, I mean, I didn't think that you would be interested so I didn't ask before, but…"

"No, that's quite all right," he interrupted with a wave of his hand. He looked at their guest sideways, his head tilted on one palm. He probably felt amused at her use of the word "welcome," as if she arrogantly thought he'd jump at the chance to help her. "Space travel isn't my thing. Don't know if it's 18's either. Sis?"

She looked at Bulma's haggard face, her normally pristine features seeming to have aged ten years. Her hair was disheveled, and the dark circles under her eyes signaled several nights of sleepless worry. The heiress could be reduced to this condition—by the actions of one man?

"Why aren't you asking your friends to help you?" 18 asked coolly.

Bulma shook her head. "They wouldn't. They wouldn't leave their jobs and normal lives for Vegeta. They'd probably just say 'I told you so,' like they expected he would leave at one point or another."

"And it's because we don't have jobs or normal lives that you ask 18?" 17 said with a half-smile. He cut her off before she could defend herself. "Makes sense."

"I'm sorry," Bulma said, looking only at 18 now. She must have figured her brother was only going to continue treating the matter as a joke. "I did ask one other person—Piccolo."

"Hmm, he's on the unemployed, abnormal list too," 17 mused.

Bulma ignored him and continued. "He said that he wouldn't help me, but he did tell me what he knew about Vegeta leaving so suddenly. Vegeta had some kind of run-in with an alien more powerful than he."

17 looked mildly interested now, staying silent as he listened.

"Apparently the alien left without causing any damage. It just blinked out of the atmosphere…using instant transmission, maybe. I asked Piccolo to take me with him because he was going into space to find this alien. He said it would be too dangerous, and I would only slow him down. And his goal isn't to find Vegeta, but to find whoever—or whatever—it was that made Vegeta want to leave Earth."

18 digested this all with methodical neutrality. "But you're only interested in finding Vegeta. How do you plan to track him down in the first place?"

Bulma looked at her with resolution and thinly veiled desperation. "I thought you might be able to help. With what you know about Vegeta from your memory."

18 exchanged glances with her brother. They both knew what she was talking about. It wasn't the actual memories she had of fighting Vegeta or speaking with him. It was the memory Gero had input into both of their databases, the reams of data on Vegeta's history and fighting style, whatever the scientist's spy bugs had managed to collect in their observations of Son Goku's acquaintances. The stores of her brain contained a fair amount of detailed information about his background.

The unspoken question remained. Why should she go? What was the point of helping this woman?

17 was watching her closely. She met his eyes, and he smiled. Somehow he knew what she was thinking. She read the silent movements of his lips. _There is no point._

She could go with Bulma into space or stay here with her brother. She was confident that no harm would come to her if she made the former choice. Few living beings were strong enough to overpower her in a fight; she had once brought down the man in question after all, and in Super Saiyan form, no less. Her presence was also undetectable, as her energy didn't register on scouter readings. At worst, if they ran across the extremely powerful alien Vegeta had encountered, she would not attract its attention. Staying here, on the other hand…she was confident nothing terribly exciting or extraordinary would happen. Most likely she and 17 would continue to live this rather uneventful life, perhaps moving to different places in the world just out of curiosity. And…if she were to make the trip into space, she would come back to live with him again anyway.

She could take temporary action, only to return to the present state later. Or she could continue the status quo without change. Either way, this is where she would end up.

She thought back to her conversation with her brother more than a month earlier.

_There are reasons for everything we do, 18. In case you haven't noticed._

But then, they both agreed there was no point, no purpose to their lives. She wondered at this paradox. She had no purpose, yet her mind indeed calculated and analyzed reasons for every possible action she could take. At the moment it had come up with no reason to help Bulma. Neither had it found any reason not to. But she did have to make a choice.

"I'll go with you," she said. She was a bit surprised when the other woman rushed forward and hugged her, gushing with thanks. She passed 17 a puzzled look over Bulma's shoulder. He shrugged.

The headlights of Bulma's hovercraft lit the woods around them. It stood ready to take them back to Capsule Corp where the spaceship would take off. 18 paused at the doorway of the cabin.

She turned and faced her brother, whose expression was passively neutral. He leaned forward and kissed her coldly on the cheek, a formality he had never observed before.

"Hope you find what you're looking for, sis," he said softly.

* * *

18 had never really cared about or paid attention to the relationships between the humans she knew. She thought her relationship with Krillin had been fairly normal, except for the fact she was not human.

Vegeta was not human, either. And it seemed the relationship between him and Bulma was far from normal. She wondered how they had managed to last this long in the first place. From the limited encounters she had with them, she knew Vegeta had never looked at or spoken to his mate and child for more than a few seconds, and judging from how he had treated his older son from the future, he couldn't care less about them. Yet Bulma always seemed completely oblivious to this, and was now determined to chase him down when he had abandoned them of his own accord.

Why now? In the past, Vegeta had gone into space without so much as a word of warning; why hadn't Bulma felt the need to follow him then?

Perhaps this was why 17 was so intrigued by human customs and behavior. They were often meaningless and convoluted. It seemed humans seldom stopped to think about how absurd some of their thoughts and actions were.

A few hours earlier, Bulma had stormed onto the ship and shut the door angrily as 18 watched from the helm, where she had been familiarizing herself with the controls. A baby's wails pierced the air.

She tensed, her mind jarred out of sync for a split-second. In that bizarre moment she felt the cries of the child defy reality, that the silence she had known was coming as she lay on that bed had actually been broken…

A split-second later she relaxed. There was no point in pursuing illogic once logic had been regained. She looked more closely at Bulma and the bundle she held in her arms.

"Are you sure he should come along?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Yes. I'm not leaving my baby behind and that's that," she said firmly, glaring at 18 as if challenging her to disagree.

"What upset you?"

"My parents. My dad said this is the most idiotic thing I've ever done. That it's too dangerous for Trunks," Bulma said, brushing her baby's hair back from his face. "But of course he'll be safe with us. You're with me, and I can fix anything that might go wrong with the ship."

"May I ask why you decided to take the child?" 18 said coolly, watching the boy indifferently as his cries tapered into hiccups.

"Because Vegeta ran away from both of us, and we're going to get him back together," she said adamantly. "I know Vegeta cares for his son. Even if he doesn't care about me sometimes, he won't forget his 'heir.'"

"So you're hoping that when Vegeta sees his son, he'll decide to come back with you? Out of remorse? A sense of duty? Or what?" 18 was trying to puzzle out this woman's reasoning.

"Out of love." Her voice retained its conviction.

18 didn't question her reasoning further; perhaps there actually was none, and this woman who was renowned for her scientific genius might be at a loss for once.

So now they were alone, with ample food supplies and a child who constantly cried, ripping through space at impressive speeds. 18 had examined the ship thoroughly and found Bulma's handiwork quite intricate and well constructed. The ship had solid defenses and a complex navigation system. 18 had told Bulma what she knew about Vegeta's history and where he had been on certain missions. There was much she did not know about the Saiyan's background, and she had wondered how the determined woman would decide where to look first. They had some clues to work with. After he had left, Bulma had managed to establish a connection between Capsule Corporation's most advanced outer-space communications system and the computer on the ship he had taken. She had retrieved the spatial coordinates of his ship at that moment. Soon afterward he had discovered he was being tracked and cut off the connection. With all her technical ingenuity, Bulma had not been able to reestablish the link. It seemed she had underestimated how intelligent Vegeta was, or she had at least failed to realize that a lifetime of working with alien technology far superior to Earth's had given him the upper hand.

They were headed for a planet in 18's database that was the closest to the coordinates they had obtained of Vegeta's location several days earlier. According to her memory, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about it. It had been colonized by Frieza and served as a checkpoint for many mercenaries and traders passing through that sector. Vegeta had stopped there after his first defeat on Earth, before he had headed for Namek.

18 had only agreed to come along and help with whatever Bulma wanted; she did not take on an active role in anything unless asked. She did not object to the woman's decisions, as nothing was personally at stake for her. It was intriguing to observe Bulma's decision-making process, however. The woman was fascinating in her own way, although 18 was beginning to wonder if her fascinating mind would actually be able to solve the problem she had set out to solve. 18 thought that perhaps Bulma had the wrong concept of what the problem was in the first place.

The heiress tended to talk a great deal. During waking hours, it seemed that if Trunks wasn't crying, his mother was speaking, telling stories about her adventures with Son Goku and her previous trip into space, fussing over the child's demands for food, and asking 18 about her own life. 18 wondered if this was how most human women were—if this was the kind of woman she had been before she had become a cyborg.

They had a few hours before they reached the planet. 18 sat on the floor beside the viewing window, eyes transfixed on the myriad stars outside. The dark expanse before her was endless and unmoving, very different from the ocean she used to gaze at every day from the beach. Every second her view of the waves and clouds, the sounds of the birds, and the feel of the wind had changed. Here, it was the same palette of black, the stars like silent fireflies frozen in time.

"Hey."

She did not turn as Bulma sat down beside her.

"Pretty, isn't it?" she commented. Before 18 could answer, or decide not to, she added, "Actually, never mind. I'm sick of staring at stars, there's nothing special about them. I guess when you look at something for too long, it loses its magic."

Interesting change in opinion, 18 noted. It saved her from going through the trouble of the talk she had had with Yamucha.

Almost as if she had read her mind, Bulma said with a sigh, "Yamucha and I used to spend nights lying in an open field, or in the desert where he used to live, looking up into the sky. We'd look for patterns in the stars and name our own constellations. It was hard, though…we kept seeing the old constellations we had grown accustomed to. It was damn near impossible to see the stars in them as separate from the manmade pictures in science textbooks."

18 listened quietly. Bulma could talk for hours without noticing the prolonged silence from her companion, or at least without caring about it. 18 didn't really mind. It was kind of like hearing Krillin's mindless chatter, except this was a woman speaking. It was intriguing, the differences in what men and women tended to talk about. She was unsure whether cars and poker were more or less interesting than Bulma's constant ramble about romantic adventures.

"Did I tell you how I met Yamucha, 18?"

"Yes." She refrained from adding, _three times_.

"It was pretty amazing what we had. He was so shy around me, and I guess pretty weird, living out in the desert with a talking cat," she went on. "But the first time I met him, I thought, you know Bulma, maybe you can scratch that wish about finding a prince to ride off with into the sunset. A desert bandit seems infinitely cooler."

She shook her head and laughed merrily. 18 thought the sound was quite unique, free of restraint and care. "To think, I wanted such petty things from the Dragonballs. I could have wished for world peace or a cure for cancer or something, but I wanted strawberries and a prince instead."

She paused for a second, drawing her knees up to her chest. "Well, one of those wishes came true without the Dragonballs."

This might get interesting. 18 looked over at Bulma for the first time since she had sat down. "Do you regret it?"

The humor was gone from Bulma's eyes as she returned her gaze. "No. I live my life with no regrets. That's my mantra. And anyway, if I regretted it, I wouldn't be wasting my time chasing His Royal Highness through space."

It was the first time they had delved into Bulma's reasoning behind her mission since she had brought Trunks onto the ship. Perhaps 18 would learn more about the human psyche through this conversation. Then again, she wondered how much a relationship as bizarre and complicated as the one between the Saiyan prince and the rich heiress could teach her about average humans.

"How did it start?" 18 asked plainly. Bulma's eyes seemed to light up at her slight show of interest.

"It's a long story. But I guess we have some time, huh," she said, leaning back on her elbows. "I guess it started on Namek. He was fighting one of Frieza's minions, Zarbon, in front of me. I thought I was crazy. One second I was terrified of him, and the next I was still terrified but really turned on. Never mind that he had caused the death of Yamucha, and had just threatened to kill me too…I only noticed the cut of his shoulders and back, the way he carried himself, utterly confident in his strength, how he staked everything in the moment and lived with the reckless abandon I had longed for since leaving home as a teenager... Then I had this irrational fear that someone would notice and reprimand me for my sudden attraction to a cold-hearted killer…no, Vegeta was more than that, he was a mass-murderer, he'd destroyed entire worlds. So I—this is pretty funny—I tried covering it up by rooting for the other guy, Zarbon. I realize how stupid I must have sounded, fawning over an alien that looked more feminine than me. I guess I overdid the act, but something funny happened then…I think Vegeta got jealous."

A fond smile appeared on her face. 18 decided this was indeed going to be a lesson on abnormal psychology.

"The more I thought about it afterward, the more I realized I had definitely gotten under his skin with my feigned affection for his enemy. He probably could have killed Zarbon right on the spot…but he gave him time to transform into this really ugly lizard-hulk thing. Probably to gross me out and show me the guy I appeared to be so crazy over had nothing on him. That was the first signal he gave me. The rest were hard to come by, but there were more than a few. You just had to watch for them carefully, or you'd miss them. Everyone else definitely missed them, which is why they were all so surprised when they found out Trunks was Vegeta's son and not Yamucha's. And why you're asking me now how the hell we ended up together.

"After he refrained from killing me on Namek and put on that little show in front of me, I stopped being afraid of him. I mean, logically I knew he could vaporize me without blinking an eye, but he didn't, and I knew somehow that he wouldn't. Once we were all transported back to Earth as Goku and Frieza continued their fight on Namek, I remember making my first pass at him. I invited him to stay at my house since he had nowhere else to go, and I threw in a little warning not to jump all over me even though I was attractive. That got him—oh, the look on his face right then was rich.

"He stayed for a while but avoided me most of that time, and I didn't care about him enough at that point to try to spend time with him or anything. I was technically still in a relationship with Yamucha, even though he was dead. We wished him back a few months later with the Dragonballs. I was happy to see him—really happy. I wasn't thinking about Vegeta, didn't even care as he stole off in one of my spaceships to find Goku.

"And then I had this dream," Bulma said, her voice like a sigh. "I don't know if this ever happens to you, but I had the most random-ass dream, filled with stuff I never gave a second thought to when I was awake. I was back on Namek at the moment I first met Vegeta face-to-face and he was threatening to kill me. He was demanding that I hand over the Dragonball I'd found. I actually stood up to him and refused for some insane reason. I totally expected to be fried to a crisp at that point. But sometimes dreams have a weird way of twisting in directions my logical mind could never figure out. Instead of killing me, he smiled, walked up to me like I was an old friend he was glad to see…and put his arm around my waist. By then the 'old friend' feeling had definitely changed to 'old flame' status. I looked into his eyes—they were dark and dangerous, with a shade of madness—and felt something set alight inside me, something I hadn't ever felt with Yamucha. And then he whispered, 'I think you'll change your mind,' and kissed me.

"And I woke up in my bed, and reality took several more seconds than it should have to set in. It felt so real, so…I don't know how to describe it, but that whole day I thought about him, wondering if this dream meant anything or if I should just try to forget about it. But I couldn't forget about it, because that afternoon he crashed my spaceship on the lawn and waltzed back into my life like he had never left. It must have been fate or something. It was too much of a coincidence. I couldn't stop thinking about him after that anyway because he was always around and in my face demanding something, repairs for the gravity room, repairs for his armor, repairs for the regen tank, and seriously pissed me off to no end. But Yamucha started noticing that despite all the breath I spent ranting about how Vegeta was an arrogant bastard, I still carried out all his requests and more. I went out of my way to do nice things for him, and tried to talk to him more even if it led to an argument (which it often did). Yamucha was never one to hide his emotions—he was clearly jealous. So we started fighting, with him accusing me of recklessly falling for this cruel, evil alien who had taken his life only a little more than a year earlier, and me angrily denying his jealous accusations as if I had never experienced any sort of benign feelings toward Vegeta.

"Our relationship of several years deteriorated over the course of about two months. When you don't have trust, things tend to go downhill pretty fast. By the end I had stopped caring. I was fed up with the possessive, insecure man Yamucha had become. I guess I couldn't blame him for how he had changed—he was far outmatched in strength by several other fighters at that point, and he must have felt bitter and insecure because of that. He probably felt he couldn't do enough to impress me anymore, and he was losing my respect and interest. Maybe I should have been more accepting and patient. He was my first love, and he was and still is a great guy—he just wasn't right for me anymore.

"It was hard to deal with our breakup just because I had gotten used to being in a relationship for so long. It felt strange to be single. At the same time it seemed Vegeta's presence in my life was growing stronger by the day. We seemed to run into each other more often, argue and fight a lot more too, but that also meant I got to talk to him. I got to know him through those stupid fights, and I found he wasn't serious most of the time we insulted each other; in fact it was pretty entertaining for him. I started thinking about certain choice insults he threw at me—that maybe he actually meant the opposite of what he said. 'Ugly,' 'hideous,' 'weak,' you get the point. I started thinking there might be something beyond entertainment in his words.

"I remember the day I finally confessed to myself that I had indeed fallen, completely in love and completely insane. It wasn't one of those heartfelt moments you see in chick-flicks. It was just an ordinary day. I walked into the kitchen to make lunch for myself, opened the fridge, and found it absolutely bare, courtesy of His Royal Pain in the Ass. I started cursing, pretty ticked off that I would have to call for take-out and then go for a grocery run. I kept asking myself why the hell I still put up with him when I could just kick him out or give him a ship to leave Earth for good, and I was so mad that I broke a nail while dialing a Chinese take-out restaurant. I cursed again, but suddenly I knew the answer to my question. Not sure if it was related to the pain in my nail.

"I loved him. I didn't want him to leave. Even though he made me want to pull my hair out pretty much every day, he also made me feel alive…with his insults and challenges, with how he almost went out of his way to try to belittle and deflate me, only because he knew I'd meet any challenge without fail and fight him tooth-and-nail every inch of the way.

"To him I was more than just the token genius whose inventions came in handy sometimes…I did build a gravity room for him, but unlike the other fighters, he didn't make me feel useless and helpless outside my ability to invent things. He also didn't give a shit about my fame or wealth like virtually everyone else in the world did. Since age 16 I've been an icon in science, business, and glamour. But celebrity status always carries two edges, you know? People love me or hate me; they're either worshipful or terribly jealous. What I hate the most is when people imply that beauty and brains don't go together, like it's a huge shock that the same woman on the cover of beauty magazines hosts international physics conventions in her backyard. Vegeta never saw that as unnatural. He wasn't confined to narrow human standards; he's encountered hundreds of different alien species and God only knows what his standard of beauty is. And as to me being the richest woman in the world—he is a prince after all, and amassed a lot of personal wealth from his mercenary work before Earth, so my wealth meant nothing to him.

"He did see me as unnatural, though. Because I didn't fear him, because I always fought him even though I was 'just a weak human.' Almost everyone else he met in his life cowered before him and begged for mercy, but I didn't. I guess somewhere along the line he started to see me as more than just unnatural…that I was special, and equal to him, perhaps…that I was _worthy_. Not because of beauty, brains, status, or even physical strength which he seemed to measure everyone else by…but because of my inner strength, which comes from who I am.

"All this just hit me at once as I slammed the phone down and stared at the trickle of blood on my finger where the nail had snapped. It was ridiculous…me, falling in love with a vicious murdering alien who had almost destroyed the Earth and killed my friends. There was no use in denying it, though.

"Being honest with myself definitely kicked my feelings for him up a notch, and my actions too. To me, our arguments weren't about winning anymore, they were just about how much I could flirt with him and lead him on without going too far. He caught on pretty quickly. I think he was confused for a bit and tried to avoid me. But I knew I had him when he changed the way he spoke around me as well. We went back and forth like that for a month. Then one night, I broke off a particularly heated argument and walked slowly back to my room, with the clear expectation that he'd follow me to put in the last word. He did follow me. Let's just say a dark bedroom and raging hormones aren't a safe combination.

"That was how our 'real' relationship began, I guess. Eventually I got pregnant—figured out too late that contraception doesn't work when your partner's a Saiyan—and he left to train in space during most of that time. He wasn't here when Trunks was born, and basically had very little contact with me up to the day you and 17 showed up. It wasn't pleasant for me, but I endured it because I understood him. I never entertained the silly notion that I could tame him or change his wild, ruthless nature. I thought if anything, love would come gradually, and when it did, it would be the most powerful, dangerous thing he would ever feel. It would shake his life more than any battle, and turn his world off its axis."

Bulma's eyes glittered with something 18 found hard to name…excitement? Anticipation? 18 had seen that look before on others, had seen it first in Vegeta's proud stare as he had carelessly challenged her to a fight on the day she and 17 were activated.

"I'm still looking for that victory, 18. I love him, against reason and pain, and I will never give up until he loves me back. I will have him realize that Trunks and I mean more to him than anything in the universe, and that we will always be here for him."

Bulma let out a sigh and leaned forward once again, her arms encircling her knees. "Enough of my rambling. 18, how are you feeling?"

18 looked at her, slightly puzzled. "About what?"

The blue-haired woman's eyes seemed to soften as she laid one hand on 18's shoulder. "I've been telling you everything about myself for the past however many days we've been on this ship. It's not that I just love to talk and can't shut up. I wanted you to know who I am and that you can trust me. You can tell me anything, and I'll listen and won't judge you."

Strange. Humans, or perhaps human women in particular, were indeed strange. To use idle conversation and storytelling in a formulated attempt to strengthen social bonds, to gain someone's trust…

18 realized what Bulma was implying through the conversation's sudden change in focus.

The heiress continued. "It's been almost a month now. I don't know what you're feeling, but I want you to know I'm here for you if you want to talk about it. I left out a huge chunk of the story about me and Vegeta—the part where I carried Trunks inside me for nine months to the harsh disapproval and criticism of my parents, old friends, everyone. They made me feel horrible, 18. Like I had done something perversely wrong, like a sin to confess and be punished for. I know what it's like to be all alone and without anyone to support you. So I want you to know that I support you no matter what, and you're not alone."

18 laughed. It was a real laugh, something she had not expected she was capable of. Bulma looked at her in confusion.

"And all this time I assumed you had no idea what had happened in my life, with Krillin, with the child I was carrying," 18 said, sobering. "You knew all along. You fooled me, Bulma. But I think you're missing something."

She had the scientist's full attention. She wondered again if the woman's brilliance ran only so far as her ability to invent gadgets and build ships.

"You love Vegeta to the extent that you will do anything to find him, even knowing he doesn't love you, because you're hoping that somehow he'll love you back in the future. You really will do anything for him, even if it means asking me to leave Earth with you."

Bulma's eyes radiated honest confusion, but 18 knew the woman was thinking fast and hard to figure out what she was saying.

"I had thought you were just unaware of the death of my child and my estrangement from Krillin. But you were aware. And yet you still asked me to come with you, knowing that Krillin loves me and wants me back more than anything."

Bulma had figured it out—some of it, at least. Her expression was defiant now. "I know Krillin loves you and is really hurting because he lost you. He's my friend and I feel sorry for him—"

"But you still begged me to go with you instead of urging me to go back to him," 18 countered.

Bulma's lips were pressed in a thin line. She responded in a tone that was considerably edgier than before.

"Because I respect your free choice, 18. I respect that you didn't want to be with Krillin anymore and chose to move in with your brother. I couldn't force you to go back to him if you didn't love him or want—"

Realization dawned on her then, and she shut her mouth abruptly. She turned away from 18 in a huff, resting her face against her knees.

"I'm not judging you, Bulma," 18 said, her voice softer, and neutral as always. "I'm not capable of judging anyhow. But I just thought you should allow for the possibility—"

"That Vegeta will choose not to come back, and I won't be able to do a thing about it. Because he doesn't love me and never will. Thanks. I get it." The confession—or confrontation of hard reality, rather—was cold and metallic, absent of her customary cheer and vivacity.

18 turned her head toward the main computer screen at the helm of the ship. It was blinking with rapidly processing strings of data. She stood and walked toward it.

"Strap yourself in. We're landing."


	6. Connate 1: Contradictions

CONNATE

Chapter 1: Contradictions

Dende was waiting for Piccolo as he landed wordlessly on the tiled floor of the lookout. The night air was cold and brisk against his face. The young guardian read his expression quite easily.

"He wouldn't talk, huh," he said quietly, his gentle voice tinged with worry. "I guess we should have expected it."

"I never expected he would talk, especially not about a defeat. But I couldn't even goad him into giving me a hint of what happened," Piccolo said gruffly. "His arrogance is going to get him killed. But I guess that's not unexpected for Vegeta either."

Dende sighed. "Well, whatever the thing was, it's out of Earth's atmosphere. Maybe we don't have to worry about it."

"No," Piccolo frowned. He walked past Dende toward the palace. "Something that strong shouldn't have been able to slip under our radar. We don't know its motivation for coming here; we can't assume it was merely interested in Vegeta. For all we know, it could be luring Earth's most powerful warrior away from the planet so it or others of its kind can return at their leisure and take over with ease."

"We have Gohan," Dende pointed out as they walked down the carpeted halls of the palace.

Piccolo shook his head. "Vegeta has always been the superior fighter. He's been bred to kill and has a lifetime of experience in battle and cold calculation. Going by mere power level, Gohan may be stronger than all of us, but he lacks experience. And he is not a killer."

Dende nodded slowly in agreement. "What do you plan to do then?"

"We need another information source," Piccolo said, turning to face the younger Namek. "The gods must have sensed something. Earth has been a perpetual cause of trouble for them; they are always watching."

Dende smiled wryly. "Looks like they can't blame this one on Goku."

Piccolo brushed aside the image of Gohan's nameless gi and his mother's cold gaze as she told him exactly how much Goku was to blame.

But this was unrelated. Goku was not involved in this, though if he were alive, perhaps he would be able to solve this problem as he had solved everything that had come their way before.

He placed a hand on the younger Namek's back. The link to the other world was already open; since he had taken on the role of Earth's guardian, Dende had learned this particular ability quite well.

_Well, well, look who it is! Or should I say hear…can't exactly see you right now…_ a bubbly voice sounded.

Dende laughed. "King Kai, my respects, sir. How have you b—"

"Let's cut the small talk," Piccolo said brusquely. "There is an important matter at hand that requires your assistance."

_Ho ho, if that isn't the jolly Green Giant. How can I appease you? Get it? A-peas? Hahaha…_

Piccolo ignored King Kai's perpetual stream of pathetic humor. "Save it. Several hours ago we sensed a powerful presence on Earth. It overpowered Vegeta but didn't kill him, and then it vanished into space. I can't get a clear reading of where it is because it can travel between planes. You can see the past as well as the present; you can see the moment Vegeta ran across this alien. I need you to tell me what exactly it is and its current location."

_Just like you, Piccolo, to throw around demands like that. Sometimes I wonder how you young'uns get away with disrespecting us gods…_

"Can you tell me or not?" Piccolo cut in again. He could feel Dende cringe at his complete lack of courtesy.

_Okay, sheesh…hmm, let's see. Something confronted Vegeta, you say? Where is the feisty lad now?_

"He left Earth alone to track down the alien."

_He didn't tell you where he was going?_

"No." Piccolo frowned. "Why does that matter? Through you we can find out directly where the alien is."

_All right, all right. Be a little patient, will ya? _ The god lapsed into silence.

"Galactic search engine processing," Dende joked. "Hope he's feeling lucky…"

"Well?" Piccolo said after several more seconds. "Find anything?"

_Hold on…_ The god's voice sounded more subdued.

"Piccolo, let him concentrate," Dende said.

Piccolo was about to retort but decided against it. He had little patience with deities; he had never had much to begin with, but the fact that he had personally surpassed the gods in strength had further lowered his respect for them.

_Hmm...I can't find anything._

Piccolo narrowed his eyes. "Check again. There's no way something like that could go unnoticed by you and all your buddies in Heaven."

_I'm sorry, Piccolo, the search has come up empty. No results…_

The scowl on his face deepened. The little respect he had for the bug-shaped god diminished further still. "Either you're incompetent, or we're facing an entity that's more dangerous than anything in either of our realms. I certainly hope it's the former. I'd rather deal with an afterlife full of idiots than an enemy that can take down a Super Saiyan and shield itself from a god's eyes."

"Piccolo…" Dende said, his disapproval clearly evident.

_Hmph. It seems you don't need me after all then. Goodbye—_

"Wait," Piccolo growled. "Tell me what happened while the alien was on Earth. What happened with Vegeta?"

Dende sighed, muttering. "You'll be lucky if he tells you anything…"

King Kai seemed to pause and consider the request. _Why should I?_

Piccolo was a bit unnerved by the god's forceful reply, devoid of humor and amiability. He had openly insulted and mocked King Kai before, for the whole time he had been training in the afterlife in fact, but never had the god sounded so edgy.

"I'm sorry," Piccolo said in a more conciliatory tone. "I'm impatient, but it's only because I'm concerned about this as a threat."

_Yeah, yeah, that's the excuse all you pompous warriors use._

"Can you tell me what happened to Vegeta?"

…_no._

Dende cut in before Piccolo could say anything more. "Please, King Kai. You know the Earth might be in danger. We don't have Goku anymore to defend it, and Vegeta just left. We really need your help…please help us!"

The god didn't budge. Piccolo couldn't believe it. "Do you _want_ the Earth to perish? Or the universe, for that mat—"

He stopped abruptly. There was a third possibility he had not considered earlier. It might not be that King Kai was incompetent, or that the mysterious entity was capable of eluding his senses…it might just be that the god was lying.

Indeed, the tone of his answers was not of a man firmly convicted by his knowledge or lack thereof, but of a man who was uncertain. A man with something to hide. Piccolo replayed their conversation in his head. Yes, the tone and nature of his answers had been uncanny at times, out of character.

"I don't know why you're not willing to give us any information," he said slowly. Dende passed him a confused look. "Perhaps this entity is something truly dangerous, enough to scare the gods into silence. Or perhaps this is all some conspiracy among you other-worlders. Keep it to yourself, then, if you think you can handle it. Just don't come crawling to us mortals when some alien shows up in your plane and starts wreaking havoc again."

The confusion on Dende's face had turned to disbelief. "King Kai…you wouldn't…"

Piccolo continued as the god still gave no reply. "But tell me one thing, if nothing else. What did it say to Vegeta? I can eventually find that out anyway if it takes Gohan and me both to beat it out of him. But for the sake of time and convenience, I'm asking you."

The rare silence stretched on. It was uncanny to hear nothing from a god who normally never shut up.

"What did Vegeta hear, King Kai? Was it a challenge? A threat?"

He waited with barely contained frustration. Dende could sense it but wisely refrained from saying anything.

…_it gave him directions._

Piccolo exchanged glances with Dende. The guardian didn't miss a beat. "Directions to where?"

_I can't tell you._

"Tell me what Vegeta heard," Piccolo demanded. "Where was he told to go?"

Silence.

"Sir, don't go!" Dende pleaded, sensing the connection was about to be broken from the other end. "Please. Help us."

Piccolo persisted. "Where did it tell him to go?"

He thought he heard an ethereal sigh, confirming the god was indeed worried, perhaps more worried than they were.

…_A man with questions inevitably goes to their place of origin._

Piccolo paused. "That's it?"

"Wait!" Dende said, raising one hand as if he could physically stop the link from breaking. Piccolo let his hand fall from the young guardian's back. The ensuing silence was permanent this time.

* * *

He felt the tenuous link hum to life with an inner sound almost audible to his ears. It was eerie to feel this bond, still very much alive inside him, when he was no longer the keeper or sustainer of the Dragonballs. Perhaps the magical orbs could never be completely severed from their original creator.

The clouds disappeared into the utter blackness of the sky, and the air around them reverberated with a low rumble that was not thunder. From the golden aura of the seven shining orbs, a dragon's vast body uncoiled slowly and gracefully, eyes aglow as its regal head bowed toward them.

_WHY HAVE YOU SUMMONED ME FROM MY SLUMBER?_ The booming words shook the air and seemed to resound within their heads as well, sweeping aside peripheral thoughts as it filled their minds.

It had taken a day for him to find and gather the Dragonballs, and he had used the time to think carefully about the best way to use the two allotted wishes. He needed to reserve the second one for obtaining a means to travel through space, a ship faster and more advanced than any Capsule Corporation model Bulma could provide. He had to choose his first wish wisely. He could not ask to know what Vegeta knew about the alien since that wish required the Saiyan's consent. Asking Shenlong what or who the alien was would not give him information about its whereabouts. Asking where it was, on the other hand, was also useless, since the alien could move great distances during the time Piccolo traveled toward its current location.

"We have a problem," Piccolo said grimly, looking upward into the dragon's unblinking scarlet eyes. "An entity capable of overpowering a Super Saiyan visited this planet two days ago. It left Earth the instant after it subdued Vegeta. I wish for a device that will allow me to track its whereabouts."

Dende watched quietly and expectantly, his eyes tinged with fear. The younger Namek had disagreed with his plan to go after the alien alone. But Piccolo was never swayed by the opinions of others once he made up his mind.

The translucent eyes of the dragon glowed as it silently began channeling the words of the wish into reality. The bright aura surrounding its long coils intensified, and then dimmed just as quickly.

_THIS WISH CANNOT BE GRANTED._

A look of disappointment washed over Dende's face. He glanced at Piccolo, questioning what he would do next.

He folded his arms, having expected this as a possible outcome. "Why not?"

_THE BEING OF WHICH YOU SPEAK IS NOT IN THE PHYSICAL PLANE. CHOOSE ANOTHER WISH._

He was silent for a moment, carefully reviewing his second option in his mind before speaking again. "The alien told Vegeta of a certain 'place of origin.' I wish to know where this is."

The dragon's eyes glowed once more, its head bowing lower in seeming concentration. Piccolo half-expected this wish to fail as the previous one had.

_NAMEK._

Piccolo met Dende's bewildered expression with a contemplative look. For a second they had both thought the dragon was addressing them by the name of their race.

"The planet Namek. Our homeworld." He wanted to be sure of Shenlong's meaning.

_YES. NOW STATE YOUR SECOND WISH. I GROW TIRED OF THE MORTAL PLANE._

"Grant me a spacefaring ship that has all the specs of the most advanced Capsule Corporation spacecraft, but it must be able to accept ki as a power source, cloak itself from both sensors and the naked eye, and conceal my life force while I am inside it."

The dragon seemed to pause and consider the rather lengthy request.

"Might be pushing it with all the details, Piccolo…" Dende said under his breath.

_YOUR WISH…IS GRANTED!_

Several meters to their right, the air shimmered and flashed as the sleek shape of a spacecraft materialized, looking almost identical to the one Vegeta had taken.

"Goodbye, Shenlong! Thank you!" Dende called as the dragon's glowing form faded and vanished. The Dragonballs scattered in seven directions, streaking across a sky that was slowly reverting back to its normal cerulean hue.

"Interesting," Piccolo mused. The first wish had not been rejected. The cryptic directions were known only to the alien, Vegeta, and presumably the gods. The latter two obviously would not share the secret, and Shenlong could not disclose what they knew without their consent. That left the alien as the only potential source of information. Unlike the others, it apparently did not consider the information a secret.

A chilling thought flitted across his mind. Did the alien know he had made the wish? Was the disclosure of information an active decision on its part? Could it be watching him at this very moment, from wherever it was in the non-physical plane?

This could be a trap. He still didn't know why the alien had directed Vegeta to Namek of all places, but from the way things looked, it was not a benign situation.

"Dende," Piccolo snapped. "Open a connection with Moori."

Dende caught the sudden worry in his voice and closed his eyes, concentrating. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face as he focused hard, seeking out the elder's life force.

His eyes shot open, bright and happy. "Moori. Moori, it's you!"

Piccolo grabbed the younger guardian's shoulder and caught the end of what the Namekian elder was saying. –_been a long time, child._

"Moori. Is everything on Namek all right?" Piccolo asked quickly.

_Piccolo? Yes, everything is fine here. Does something concern you?_

Dende breathed a sigh of relief as Piccolo continued. "There's been some trouble here. Some alien showed up here that's more powerful than a Super Saiyan and has somehow scared the gods into silence; I can't get any information about what or where it is. It apparently told Vegeta to find some 'place of origin' and then vanished from this planet; Vegeta's somewhere in space now trying to track it down. I just used the Dragonballs to find out what his supposed destination is. The alien meant Namek, Moori. I need you to alert your people and be on guard for any foreign presence. Hide the Dragonballs. We don't know what we're dealing with."

An approaching streak of ki flashed through his senses. He growled. _Not now, Gohan._

_The Dragonballs are safe. We keep them well-hidden with magic when there is no need to use them. But I will alert our people of the threat,_ Moori's old, solemn voice sounded. Some part of Piccolo stirred in vague memory, reminded that he was indeed one of Moori and Dende's kin.

"Good," Piccolo said gruffly. "I'll be arriving there soon."

_We look forward to your return, brother. _The faint sense of a kindly smile, and the link faded.

"Piccolo?" the boy said quietly, standing a few feet away.

"Gohan," he said grimly.

"What's going on?" His dark blue gi bore a recently mended tear across the middle of his chest. "Are you going somewhere?"

"Yes," he answered, not softening his gaze. "But you're not."

Gohan frowned, looking very much like his mother when crossed. "At least tell me what happened. Why are you leaving?"

Piccolo reiterated the story, growing tired of the same frustrating mysteries and unknown variables passing through his lips. The boy deserved to know everything he knew, though. He was needed here on Earth.

"I'll come with you, then," Gohan said quickly, taking a step forward. He looked over at the new spacecraft. "I'm guessing that's the ship you're taking?"

"I said you're staying here," Piccolo stated firmly. He folded his arms and returned the boy's half-sullen, half-desperate glare with an unmoving stare. "You understand that if both of us leave and the alien comes back, there'll be no one here to defend the Earth?"

"If it could put Vegeta down in a few seconds, I wouldn't be much use if it came back here anyway," Gohan snapped back. "At least the two of us together—"

"Don't talk back to me, Gohan," Piccolo said impatiently, but instantly regretted it. The kid was insecure and needed reassurance. Instead of helping Gohan see reason, the reprimand had only made him sound like the boy's tyrant of a mother. The hurt showed on his pupil's face, quickly followed by a mask of bitter anger.

"So you're going to Namek. What will you do if the alien finds you first? How are you going to fight it?" Gohan's voice was suddenly hard as ice.

"I can handle myself," Piccolo said curtly. But he realized just how poorly he was handling the boy's transition into teen years. He let out a sigh before speaking again in a more even tone. "The issue here isn't the threat posed by the alien. It's about whether you trust me."

Gohan was silent, clearly scouring his mind for some example, some instance from the past where his teacher had broken his trust. They both knew what the result of his search would be.

"I…just don't want you to die," he said.

"I don't plan to," Piccolo said.

Gohan understood the unspoken message through the pointed silence. Piccolo couldn't afford to divide his attention between the enemy and watching out for Gohan's safety. _You remember how I died the first time._

"I would never do something if I weren't convicted that it's the best choice. You know that by now," Piccolo said calmly. He hesitated before adding, "You know me better than anyone."

The rare admittance of his esteem for his only student helped a little in cracking Gohan's hard glare. "I still don't…I don't get it."

Dende had been watching respectfully from the side. His soft-spoken manner was a sharp contrast to Piccolo's roughness. "Don't get what, Gohan?"

The boy looked at the floor, the unruly spikes of his hair falling across his forehead. "I don't understand why we have to face yet another insanely powerful enemy. Why Earth seems to be God's favorite shithole in the universe. Hasn't it been enough?!"

The young guardian laid a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder, only to jerk away at the sudden flare in Gohan's ki. The boy raised his face to the sky in challenge to someone other than his teacher and friend. "Son Goku is dead! My father stayed dead so that all this crap wouldn't have to happen anymore! But it still does! Why?!"

Piccolo powered up steadily and grabbed both of his shoulders. "Gohan, listen to me," he said firmly. "Calm down. Get a hold of yourself."

Gohan's tears were sizzling against his aura. He had never seen the boy so unstable. It was like facing a five year-old child with uncontrollable surges of power, again.

"Gohan, if you keep this up, you're going to shake this place apart. You'll probably kill Dende," Piccolo said levelly. "Power down, now."

The boy took in a shuddering gasp of air and gritted his teeth. The realization of how close he had come to killing a friend had struck a nerve. "I'm sorry," he said shakily as his aura retreated. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"

"Don't apologize," Piccolo cut in. "You have a right to be angry. But you have to accept that it's not your fault. You didn't choose for your father to die, and you didn't choose to draw this new threat to Earth."

"I never chose this power, either," Gohan said brokenly. "I never chose to have to fight. I never wanted to be anything but a normal person."

"Bitterness will do nothing for you, kid," he said simply. "You either accept what you can't change, or it changes you into something ugly."

"You're right," he said. His fiery will to argue had completely evaporated. He bit his lip. "I was being selfish, wanting to go with you. I'd leave Earth defenseless, and my mom and my brother…"

"It's not selfish," Piccolo said, his tone as close to kind as it could be. "You're just being a normal person."

"Hey, you guys!" a female voice called from afar. Bulma had landed her hoverjet a distance away and was running toward them. "I saw the dragon—what happened? I was planning to wish for something myself—"

Her eyes widened as she saw the ship Shenlong had conjured. "How the hell did one of my ships end up here? But—it doesn't have our logo…"

"I'm leaving to find the alien Vegeta encountered," Piccolo stated matter-of-factly.

She paused and stared at the three of them. Piccolo had never paid much attention to her appearance, but the difference was obvious. She looked like she hadn't rested in days.

"I'd been planning to gather the Dragonballs myself so that I could find Vegeta," she said blankly. "He ran across an alien? Is that what made him leave so suddenly?"

"Yes," Piccolo said impatiently. He'd be damned if he had to repeat the story a fifth time.

Dende stepped in for him. "We don't really know much about this alien, just that it managed to overpower Vegeta and then winked out of here without a trace. We don't know why it was here or where it went. Piccolo's going into space to try to find it."

"Figures, Vegeta never could put up with losing." She ran a hand through her disheveled hair as she contemplated the situation for another second. "Piccolo, can I come with you?"

"No," he said. He held up a hand at the sight of the stubborn look on her face. "No one is coming with me, not even Gohan. My business is with this alien, not Vegeta, and having anyone with me will only slow me down."

"Do you know where Vegeta is, at least?" she said.

"You shouldn't try to go after him, Bulma," Piccolo said warningly. "And no, I don't know where he is."

He could sense Dende was about to speak and silenced the guardian with a glare. _ Don't tell her anything. She's another liability._

"Sorry, I'll be making my own decisions," she said huffily. "But if you don't want to help me, that's fine."

She looked toward Gohan. Piccolo repeated himself for emphasis. "Gohan's not leaving. He's staying to guard the planet."

The woman shot an irritated glare in his direction. "He's not a kid anymore. He can decide for himself." She smiled sadly at Gohan. "I'm bringing Trunks with me. We both want Vegeta back. He needs his daddy."

Her insufferable stubbornness had been getting on his nerves, but this outright manipulation was too much for him to stomach. He could see Gohan faltering, doubting his decision to stay, doubting his trust in his teacher's authority. Sympathizing with a woman and child who had been abandoned just as he had…

"I'd like to help you, Bulma, but—" he began hesitatingly.

"But he can't," Piccolo said brusquely. "He's staying here."

Her blue eyes flashed angrily at him. He met her acidic gaze without flinching. Human women were such maddening creatures.

"Where do you get off telling him what he can and can't do?" she challenged. "He saved the world while you stood on the sidelines. You need to stop treating him like a child and let him make his own choices. It's not that you need him to protect the Earth. You just want to keep coddling him like he's a baby."

"You need to see beyond your own selfishness and feel a little _shame_ over how damn manipulative you are, and realize you're putting yourself and Trunks in reckless danger by running after Vegeta," he growled. "What are you thinking? Taking a toddler into space? Are you mad?"

The indecisiveness on Gohan's face faded as Piccolo shut her down with his logic. She set her mouth in a thin line, glaring daggers at him.

"Fine. I guess it's impossible for an asexual alien to understand. I'm fighting to have my family back, and I'm not going to lie down and give up," she said, looking at all of them with fierce determination. "Love is selfish. It means being willing to do anything for that one person you love. Not for the Earth, not for humanity or some heroic bullshit like that. Love is personal."

Piccolo opened his mouth to retort that she knew jack shit about self-sacrifice, that between the two of them, _he _was the one who had actually given up his life for someone else.

Gohan beat him to the punch, but with an unexpected question. "So what does that make my dad, Bulma?" he said quietly. "I guess he didn't really love us."

Piccolo cursed inwardly at the twinge of painful jealousy he felt as Gohan thought of his father's death instead of his own—the death that had been so much more difficult than anything a cookie-cutter hero like Son Goku had ever had to do. He had sacrificed all he had been, the very calling of his blood for revenge and destruction, and killed his old self inside the moment before Nappa's ki blast had hit him full-force and taken away his physical life.

"Gohan, I didn't mean—" Bulma began.

Piccolo cut her off abruptly. "Look, you all can stand around and argue about love and ideals as much as you want, but that doesn't change the fact that we're all under threat from an enemy we don't even know. Bulma, deal with your fucked-up marital life on your own, and leave Gohan out of it."

He turned briskly toward his student. "She's right in that you aren't a child anymore. I'd say you stopped being one long before the day you killed Cell. You can make your own choices, but I'll be damned if I let anyone manipulate you into a reckless course of action. Think with your head, Gohan, and tell me if the decisions I've made aren't the best we can do given the situation."

The tense silence was rife with unspoken challenges and threats between Piccolo and the woman as Gohan thought over his mentor's words. Finally, he looked sadly at Bulma and told her he was sorry.

Given her state of desperation, Piccolo had to give her credit for taking his refusal with a certain amount of grace and hugging the boy before she sped off in her hovercraft. Whatever she did now was none of his concern.

"How will you survive without food?" Dende asked quietly, having wisely refrained from taking part in the argument.

"Ice is plentiful in space," he replied simply. "The ship can draw great quantities of water from it."

"Good luck, sensei," Gohan said. Before Piccolo could move, the boy had wrapped his arms around him in a crushing hug. His next words were quiet and fearful. "Promise that you'll come back."

He looked down at his student's unruly black hair, about to offer a cynical retort about useless promises. Gohan had called him teacher. In reality, whether he had initially wanted it or not, he had taken on the role of a father. It was frightening to think about how much responsibility lay across his shoulders, for the boy's happiness, for his self-confidence, for his desperate fight against loneliness and depression. He found he did not want to go, that he would rather stay and watch over Gohan and his infant brother, and even their ungrateful shrew of a mother.

_Soft. I've gone soft. _ He wondered, not for the first time, what his own father would think if he could see him now.

"You have my word, Gohan."

* * *

He had called the Earth his home since birth. But it had never welcomed him. He had tasted its hostility in his first breath of air, the moment a cold wind had blown through the crack he had made in the shell encasing him. Opening his eyes for the first time to color and form and sound, he had seen around him a world he was born to hate, to crush under his power and burn into the image of the immemorial curse in his blood.

On the day of his death, he had been told that the world he had been destined to conquer and ruin was not his home at all. That he was truly an anomaly, that there was a reason the Earth and all living beings on it had always abhorred and feared him. That despite the seal of blood vengeance binding him to the planet, the blood that flowed in his veins was never meant to spill on its soil. How fitting that the messengers who had set to burn all his conceptions of who he was had also been the ones to open his veins…and how fitting that he had willingly allowed it, for the sake of the one life on that hated world that saw him as something other than a monster.

The one life that called him friend. Teacher. And though the boy had never spoken it aloud…Father.

It was strange to leave the Earth now, the place that had never truly been his home, because he was leaving behind more than just earth and air. And he did not know if he would ever return. He only knew he had given his word.

He reached his destination sooner than he expected. The ship Shenlong had crafted at his bidding was indeed useful.

He stepped outside into a world very similar to that which had been his real home, a planet that had been destroyed several years earlier. He adjusted his power level to withstand the heavier gravity, changed his breathing to match the denser composition of the air, and turned his face toward the perpetually nightless sky.

_Home_. The sigh came from within deep threads of his consciousness that were not originally his own. An unbidden smile curved his lips, a remnant of the dying warrior he had absorbed.

Laughter echoed lightly through the valley below. Several streaks of ki were racing through the air toward him, and he realized they were not slowing as they neared. With a confused look, he stepped out of the path of one of the figures and caught it by the leg just as it rocketed past. He stared in bewilderment at the giggling Namekian child hanging upside down from his hand.

He almost dropped the boy as another streak of ki barreled into his right leg and clung to it tightly.

"Gotcha! Uncle Moori told us you were coming! Welcome back, Nail!" the second boy exclaimed, grinning up from Piccolo's knee.

"We were sent to get you, Mister! Could you please let me down now?" the child dangling at his side giggled.

"Hey, not fair! You guys cheated!" A smaller child landed in front of him, his expression drawn into a pout. He was trying to breathe evenly to show that the race hadn't worn him out. A slow smile spread across Piccolo's face at the realization that his people were thriving here, that they were able to raise their young in peace once more.

"Mister Nail! Did you bring anything cool with you from outer space? Did you?" The boy let go of his leg and hopped around expectantly.

"I'm afraid the only thing I brought is me," he said with a poorly hidden smirk. "And this…"

He pressed a button on the side of the ship and it vanished in a cloud of smoke. He tucked the miniscule capsule that now contained it in the folds of his belt.

"Whoa…"

"Awesome!"

They were just like Gohan had been all those years ago. Perhaps children were the same on every world.

"Well, let's go back to the village. The elders are waiting!" he said, tugging at Piccolo's free hand.

He set the first child on the ground rather gently. The boy jumped up immediately and flew a circle above them.

"All right, let's see how fast you can fly, Nail!"

"We gotta be polite, he's a guest! Call him Mister!"

"Mister, can I call you Nail?"

He paused, looking at their expectant faces. "You can call me Piccolo."

"Whoa, that's a cool name!"

"Come on, Mister Piccolo, let's go!"

The elders were waiting at the center of the village, standing strong and proud in the midst of the new life they had begun on this planet. Most of them Piccolo recognized from the months they had spent on Earth before they had found a suitable new homeworld. It was apparent that all recognized him, or their brother who was now a part of him.

"Welcome back," Moori said, a warm smile creasing his face. "We are glad to have you among us again, however short your stay may be."

"It is good to see you, elder," Piccolo said. The feeling of déjà vu grew stronger, that sense of familiarity that felt old and new at the same time. "But unfortunately I'm here to deal with a problem and have to involve all of you in it."

"We understand," Moori said, and several others nodded. "We will do our best to assist you."

"Nothing out of the ordinary has happened since we last spoke?" Piccolo asked.

"Nothing to our knowledge," the elder said. His voice grew somber. "Perhaps it is not surprising that the entity you seek told Vegeta to come here. We have been seeing more visitors as of late."

"Visitors?" Piccolo said. His face darkened. "Because of the Dragonballs."

Moori sighed. He looked at the children who had been respectfully quiet for the past minute. "Run along, little ones. We have important things to discuss with our guest."

"Bye, Mister Piccolo!"

"Come play with us later!"

Moori watched them fly off with a fond, wistful smile. "Never thought you'd see children running around here, did you? They are the joy of our lives, if one disregards the trouble they tend to get into all the time."

The other elders dispersed as Piccolo followed Moori into his simple earthen dwelling. He sat down on the large mat in the middle of the circular room and motioned for Piccolo to sit as well.

"Tell me more about this mysterious visitor."

"I don't know much more than what I've already told you," Piccolo said. "I was meditating when I felt a distinct presence in the city, its power level rising quickly alongside Vegeta's. Vegeta's ki shrank suddenly, and then the alien presence just vanished. I could still sense it somewhere in space, but it was moving between planes. To be able to do that…it either knows instant transmission, or it is not mortal."

Moori slowly nodded, digesting all this with patience. "You mentioned it 'scared the gods into silence?'"

"Apparently this subject is taboo among them. King Kai wouldn't tell me anything except that the alien directed Vegeta to a certain 'place of origin.' His exact words were, 'A man with questions inevitably goes to their place of origin.'"

"And Earth's dragon revealed that that place was Namek."

"Yes," Piccolo said. "At the moment I have no idea what the hell all this means…why the alien came to Earth, what kind of being it is in the first place, why it went for Vegeta…"

"Vegeta has not been here," Moori said. "I am certain of that."

"Then…" Piccolo frowned. "Dragons don't lie. The alien truly meant for Vegeta to come to Namek. The Saiyan might have misunderstood the message and gone somewhere else."

"Or he might have been delayed somewhere in space, and is still making his way here."

"Maybe you don't know Vegeta well enough. Not that that's a bad thing; the man's royally insufferable," Piccolo said. "But he wouldn't let anything get in his way. He's simply too powerful to be hindered by anything."

"Hmm. I find the words of the message quite curious," Moori said thoughtfully. "A man with questions…inevitably goes to their place of origin? What questions could Vegeta have had?"

"He's not a deep thinker; more the burn-kill-destroy type. I can't imagine Vegeta itching to know anything from anyone."

"Still, there must be something he wanted to know, and the origin of his questions is supposedly here."

"I've been thinking about this, Moori," Piccolo said. "About what 'place of origin' means. It could be a couple of things. Vegeta died on old Namek by Frieza's hand. He was enslaved by that tyrant for most of his life; perhaps his own death, or Frieza's death for that matter, symbolized some new start, a new 'origin' for him. But that explanation is too poetic and patronizing for either Vegeta or me to take seriously. The only other possibility is that it has something to do with the Dragonballs—the only reason the universe has ever taken an interest in Namek. Speaking of which, you said you've been having visitors."

Moori sighed. "Ah, the visitors. We turn them away as nicely as we can. One of our warriors is quite talented in the psychological arts and has been able to erase the intruders' knowledge of the Dragonballs and memories of coming here. But no matter how many we send away in this manner, more keep arriving. Some are paid handsomely for the task. We've seen emissaries from governments, cartels, even warlords."

"How did they find out about this place?" Piccolo asked, disturbed by the implications of what he was hearing.

"All people need is a rumor, Piccolo." Moori smiled wryly. "Eyewitnesses are even better. When Frieza came, he brought many soldiers with him. Not all of them were killed. Some escaped before the planet's demise and lived to tell about what they had seen."

"They will stop at nothing for the Dragonballs' power," Piccolo said softly. "It is the same across all the universe."

"Yes," Moori said. He stood and walked to the circular window behind them, looking outside with a wistful expression. "Where there is life, there is the desire for power."

"Except for your people," Piccolo said. "Our people."

The elder smiled sadly. "We are no exception."

Piccolo watched the old man's eyes, flickering subtly with some hidden knowledge. Questions returned to him, thoughts from the day he had sensed the alien's presence. Strange that he had never asked these questions before.

"Moori. Why were the Dragonballs made?"

The elder turned toward him slowly. "Ah, the question every child of our tribe inevitably asks when he is old enough to realize he does not understand the world."

Piccolo bristled, about to retort that he was not a child, but knew from the older Namek's calm expression that it was not meant to be an insult.

"Piccolo, you created Dragonballs at one point yourself, did you not?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me why you did?"

He was silent for several seconds as his mind sifted through old memories, half-forgotten, half-formed from a self that was not entirely his. "No," he said. "I don't know why. It just seemed to…happen. Like a natural process."

Moori nodded slowly, knowingly. "That is how it was, Piccolo, _siulahne_, exile. Your sire left this planet before the old ways came to an end. Today it is different."

"What do you mean?"

"How much do you know of your own origin, brother?" Moori asked gently. "Do you know the reason you left your people and ended up on Earth, far away from the land of your birth?"

Piccolo opened his mouth to speak without an answer. He surprised himself with this thoughtless action. He did not have an answer; there was nothing to say.

Moori's aged eyes twinkled. "I will tell you what my father, Guru as he was known, told me before his passing, what very few of even our own people know. Because the threat of this new power is very great, perhaps greater than you currently imagine. And because it is time for you, my brother who once was lost and now is found, to know."


	7. Conditioned 2: Confrontation

CONDITIONED

Chapter 2: Confrontation

He stared at the ceiling, the continuous drone of silence in his ears. There was only the soft slide of skin under the fabric of his bodysuit as his taut muscles relaxed against the mattress.

He realized he had not heard his own voice for a long time. Only the metallic whirring of machinery and the clicking of the keyboard on the ship's computer. He was surrounded by absence.

Perhaps he would rest before he arrived at his next destination. Even in the absence of danger, he had slept less than he could have in the last several weeks. It was in his conditioning to minimize sleep even when time was abundant.

In abundance, time was an agent of rust. Soldiers knew this truth intimately.

He closed his eyes and allowed his mind to drift. He might fall asleep, or his thoughts might keep him awake.

He had the blood and title of a prince, and the soul and mind of a soldier. There was no question that conditioning trumped heritage. He could assert his title before others, but his words would always ring empty inside him. What he was and what he should be were two different things. Only one was real.

For the first five years of his life, he had been a prince. He had been taught that a monarch must not let any small detail, any shadow of a threat, escape his notice. A prince had to be aware of all potentialities at all times, and made it a cardinal objective to master the unknown. For the three decades following his father's death, he had become a soldier. His royal grooming had been replaced by harsh military training: to focus on one task at a time, blocking out all distractions and periphery details in order to complete the assignment at hand. It had kept him alive through disastrous missions and failed purges, kept him focused through the sensory overload of brutal bloodshed and violence during his first real brushes with death in large-scale battles and outright massacres.

But between each battle stretched long periods of inactivity, of staring blankly into the black void of space en route to missions, gambling or whoring when such entertainment was available, training when he could find a suitable facility.

Soldiers were left to their own devices to figure out how to deal with boredom, which easily led to restlessness. Restlessness, in turn, was only a step away from discovering the truth.

The truth was meaninglessness. Movement and action, thought and interaction served as handy covers for the emptiness that lay at the core of all life. Many never faced the truth, whether it was out of cowardice, foolish idealism, or brainless ignorance. Most clung to a reason, or several reasons, to continue living, whether they realized it or not. Most had goals and aspirations to drive them perpetually forward, never experiencing a moment where the bottom fell out of their self-absorbed plans and left them standing on the nothingness of reality.

For soldiers, blood and victims' screams painted and adorned that empty space, concealing what lay beneath one's immediate line of vision. Violence and bloodshed sated their need for a reason to live. It was when the killing and screaming stopped that one was left to stare downward, beyond the fading streaks of crimson and echoes of death, at the abyss that waited to swallow them whole.

Faced with the stark truth, some took their own lives. Some lost their sanity and became mechanical shells of their former selves, living minute-by-minute in a shallow, tomorrow-less existence, while others became slaves to carnal lust, desperately seeking out all forms of pain and pleasure just to be free of conscious thought for a precious few moments.

Then there were some who constructed meaning for themselves. They established goals to drive themselves forward, never resting to look down. It was best to have a goal that was impossible. Then one would never stop moving, because the prize would always be ahead, out of reach.

He had been one such soldier. And his goal, naturally: ascend to the Legendary state, and kill Frieza.

For all its emptiness, life seemed not without humor—a very dark streak of it. The goal he had spent his life pursuing in all its impossibility had been burnt up like rice paper and scattered to the wind, as easily as the last breeze that had brushed his blistered skin on Namek. Burnt up by a third-class peasant who had not even been aware of the iniquity of his act.

Vegeta had met his end by Frieza's hand; in another stroke of dark humor, he had been wished back, only to find Kakarott had ascended before him and was in the process of beating Frieza to death. In the golden flame of Kakarott's power he saw the reflection of his utter failure. And, turning his gaze downward for the first time, he saw emptiness.

On Earth for the second time, he had had to laugh at himself, at the absurd fancy he had once had for the idea of immortality. What was the point, when an endless life merely meant an endless stretch of nothingness below one's feet? And what was the point, now that his strongest enemies were dead, leaving him to stand alone at a desolate summit? All the Earthlings had stared at him, wondering if he had gone mad, as he tossed fistfuls of grass into the air and raved about conquering the universe. As if he was still bent on meeting a challenge that had become a non-challenge.

The news that Kakarott had survived Namek's destruction came just in time, before he could decide to pursue that course of action just for the hell of it.

He constructed a new goal, foolish as it was. Kill Kakarott.

No, killing the man was not the point. He could have killed the overly trusting fool in a dozen clever ways that did not involve strength. The goal was to _surpass_ him.

Impossible—perhaps not; the distance between them was not nearly as wide as the gap that had separated him from his former master. But it was impossible enough.

Then Cell had taken Kakarott's life—or the fool had taken his own life. Either way, Kakarott died, and Vegeta had not been the one to kill him—had not even gotten the chance to try. And in yet another merry stroke of black humor, the man had chosen to remain dead.

No more goals. Nothing but an impatient woman and a squalling infant to distract him from the smiling maw of the abyss. Despite all the ways she irritated him, he found that she had understood him better than most others.

But it seemed the mutual understanding they had implicitly established was now non-existent. It puzzled him that she had so vehemently opposed his leaving for space, as if this time were different than all his previous departures. Perhaps she believed he had "changed" in some fundamental way after Cell, when their son from the future had fallen with a ki blast through his heart, and Kakarott had died permanently. Perhaps she now expected him to act differently.

She was an irritating, and irritatingly fascinating woman.

It was strange that in the brief time he had been with Bulma, he had begun noticing small details again, taking interest in the maddening complexities of who she was and what she offered him in the form of her sharply intelligent mind, verbal battles tinted with innuendo and desire, and the language of her facial expressions and body movements. She revealed just enough through her words and sultry looks to make him wonder about the enticing possibilities of something more.

In the past, he would have taken such a woman without ceremony or question, at the first inner tug of desire. Then he would have moved on to the next task, the next step in an infinite sequence toward meeting his goal. But he found that his focus had begun to loosen, to fray at the edges, and he blamed it on the soft, trivial culture of the planet he had had the misfortune of settling on. And he blamed it on the woman. She had made him want something more than just her body, and think about more than just the next threshold of power he had to reach. And in that wanting, he had thought for the first time that perhaps there was something more than the emptiness of existence, something not constructed by one's will but intrinsically present, elusive but real…

Perhaps that was how she had "changed" him. He had started to believe he could live on Earth in peace, that a woman's company and a mundane life could perhaps be meaningful after all. But he was glad to be free of that fallacy.

In these few weeks, frustrating as they had been, he had realized once again why warfare had always been so exalted by his people. To have something to fight, conquer, surpass—to have an enemy—was what gave life meaning.

He had a new enemy and a new goal. Expectedly, it was near-impossible, even more so now than before. He had recalculated his measure of confidence after his first faulty interpretation of the priest's words.

His next guess was likely to be wrong, as he realized he understood almost nothing about the priest. No matter. He had time.

The priest's circumlocutory manner of speech and tendency toward philosophical banter had made a literal interpretation of "place of origin" seem highly improbable. Yet he had decided to test its improbability.

The origin of questions in his life—the origin of questions for any young child—was one's place of birth. He was returning to his homeworld. Or rather, the solar system where his homeworld had once been.

* * *

He stared through the glass, the steady drone of the ship's engines in his ears. He could feel the chill of the space outside through the thin fabric of the navy bodysuit he wore.

All vestiges of sleep were gone from his eyes. His destination was near; he could see the glowing ball of Vegetasei's sun, no longer a mere speck of white.

The reigning questions of his youth rose again from the dust of his earliest memories. Questions to which he would never know the answers. What would it have been like to hold the reins of power over a warrior race with fire and ki infused in its blood? Would his people have respected and feared him as much as they did his father? What new levels of greatness would his race have reached under his rule?

Senseless questions. The past could never live again. Those roads of possibility had terminated long ago in dead ends. Or rather, a single dead end. Frieza.

His people, his homeworld, his freedom, his destiny—all terminated at the hands of one being. For each new level of power he managed to attain, at the end of the day cold reality was always there to blanket his sleep. He was a slave to another, mocked with the title of "prince," as he could never become a king.

He was returning to that place in his past where so many roads had been open to him. Paths to greatness, to glory, to the fulfillment of prophecy. When he had still had the chance to become a warrior king, controlling the destiny of an empire. Perhaps the chance to remain blissfully unaware of the meaninglessness of it all.

He passed the fringes of Vegetasei's solar system. The outermost planet hurtled by his window, sending the first wave of innate memory through his senses.

"_Is this where my dominion ends?"_

_A harsh chuckle. "I am not dead yet, boy. The dominion is not yet yours." A sobering pause. "This will not be the end. You have prophecies to fulfill, my son. The boundaries of your empire will only be limited by the level of power you attain."_

His fist clenched and unclenched at his side. The boundaries of his empire were the confines of his own body. Even after attaining the power of the Legendary, he realized that not much had changed. It had taken several beatings and the death of Mirai Trunks to shatter his prideful misconceptions of his own status. He was still a man. A man with the strength of a god, but a man nonetheless.

He pressed his hand against the cool glass of the window. There, between the crook of his thumb and forefinger, had been his training ground for space combat lessons. Near the ringed planet, he had deliberately blown apart his instructor's ship in a temper tantrum, and had subsequently faced his father's wrath.

"_It is a shame on my honor that a son of mine would demonstrate such lack of self-control. A ruler does not slay his servants as it pleases him! You must sustain the loyalty of your followers, not breed enemies among them!"_

He supposed that even after all these years, self-control still escaped him. The sound of his own voice speaking in a much more recent memory rose unbidden alongside his father's harsh words.

"_I decided he was not a servant worth keeping. As his Prince I was within my rights to kill him."_

And the question that followed it—the same question that easily fell into place beside all of his actions:

"…_why did you commit the murder?"_

…_why did you…_

_Why?_

His nails dug into his palms. The question was irrelevant; the answer was meaningless. He did not care to know.

Did not care if the final answer he had given the priest was correct.

Another unbidden memory rose at once to counter that thought. The absurd apprehension he had felt as he waited…fearing he had answered wrongly before the invisible stranger who was not human.

His choice. It had always been his choice to kill, to destroy, to betray…?

And was it still?

His nails dug deeper into his palms, breaking the skin and drawing blood. Pain broke concentration, erased thought—his cardinal rule of discipline. In that second of relief he refocused his attention on something else.

He saw ahead the dark gash in space where Vegetasei had once been. He entered the first ring of dust and debris.

_Is this where my dominion ends?_

On Vegetasei, when warriors died, their ashes were scattered over the ocean nearest their place of death. There was no body left to view, no grave to visit. Warriors' spirits were not contained by shallow graves and empty ceremonies. Their bodies were eliminated, no longer of use or significance without a vital life force inside them.

The planet had been left to a different fate. Its corpse lay scattered in millions of pieces across the solar system, a visible testament to its ruler's failure and its people's demise.

But not all Vegetasei's people were dead. He remained. The only full-blooded Saiyan still alive. After he died, perhaps the debris of his planet would dissipate and vanish like ashes across an ocean, as was fitting for a warrior's death.

The piercing sound of the ship's alert shattered the chains of memory around his consciousness.

His eyes riveted on the screens and the radar. Five spacecraft were approaching him from all sides.

He immediately saw that they were not warships or monitors. They were junks, hardly suited for combat. Their gray shells bore obvious dent marks, their wings clipped in some places. Two of them appeared to have been cobbled together with miscellaneous parts of different ships.

There was an incoming signal from one of them. He switched on another screen to begin receiving the transmission, intrigued to discover who currently held power in this area.

A dark green reptilian face appeared on the screen, baring rows of serrated teeth.

"Greetings, stranger. Let us skip the formalities, shall we?" The coarseness of the reptile's voice struck a curious contrast with his polished manner of speech. "We will not ask your origin or purpose, only that you hand over your ship. Lord Szemnere has use for it."

Vegeta had not switched on the transmission from his end; he decided not to reveal his face just yet. This could become interesting. "I fear I am not familiar with the customs of this domain or the name of your sovereign. Would you deign to enlighten me?"

The reptile's expression changed from a sneer to a smirk of amusement. "A true rarity. Are you a first-time visitor to this side of the galaxy, that you have never heard the name of our great lord?"

"It has been a while," Vegeta answered simply.

The smirk disappeared, replaced by a solemn stare, as if the mere act of speaking of his lord was a most serious matter. So he was one of those—a mindless acolyte of some petty upstart. He almost rolled his eyes—one of Bulma's habits that had grown on him.

"Lord Szemnere is the Never-born, the Ever-living. He is the most beautiful of the gods." His voice was reverent. "He left the immortal realm to enter the mortal coil, willingly forsaking his unfathomable beauty for a body of flesh and blood. But even his earthly form is perfection, and his power is unsurpassed. This is his chosen domain, and those fortunate enough to dwell here live to learn his truth."

"I see. And why might your all-powerful lord need to steal my spacecraft? Could he not conjure one out of thin air? Gods seem to have those sorts of abilities." Even in mocking the reptile's embellished speech, boredom was evident in his voice. "And for all this talk of beauty, why does your lord surround himself with beasts?"

The alien snarled, baring rows of razor sharp teeth. "You are a fool to mock Lord Szemnere and his servants! You will vacate your ship immediately and come with us. Resist, and you will face the consequences."

This time Vegeta did roll his eyes. Had he ever employed such clichés when taunting his enemies?

The threat was not only overused—it was redundant. There were consequences for every action. What mattered was who had control of the consequences.

A pleasant feeling spread slowly through his senses. It was old and familiar, something he had not felt for a good span of time. To have power over life—to know that the edge of his will formed the precipice between the life and death of another…the power was intoxicating. It reduced those irritating questions of motive and choice to a mere itch. He smiled, invisible to the hopelessly ignorant reptile sneering at him on the screen. The consequences of this situation were his to control.

"Did you hear the order, unworthy scum? Vacate your ship immediately, and perhaps we will treat you with more mercy than you deserve."

He expanded the shield of the ship so that he would be able to breathe when he stepped outside. The reptile's face relaxed as the door of Vegeta's ship slid open.

He donned his armor and stepped out into coldness, taking in the sight of the enemies surrounding him. No, they were not enemies—only toys at his disposal. A cruel smirk touched his features. He levitated upward until he could stand on the cool metal of the ship's hull.

Five sets of anti-spacecraft weaponry were trained on him. Slowly, he raised his hands above his head in a gesture of surrender.

And obliterated the two ships above him in one concentrated blast.

A quick shot to the right and left, and two other spacecraft burst asunder. The last one fired a laser directly at him.

_Idiot_. _Any second-rate pilot would think to aim for the ship beneath my feet._

He deflected the shot effortlessly and blasted the ship into a shower of scrap metal.

The satisfying knowledge of his absolute dominance over his now-dead enemies soured into contempt. How many of these mindless cult followers had settled here, in the once proud empire of his race? His land of birth, his rightful domain, was now the dominion of some charlatan passing himself off as a god.

Perhaps he would pay the pretender a visit.

* * *

He entered the floating city without much difficulty. It was sparsely guarded, lacked a defensive shield, and was overall a model of poor urban planning. Usually when there were no inhabitable planets in a solar system, colonists would construct such cities, primarily as trading ports and refueling stations. This one apparently lived off of piracy and forced tribute payments from passersby.

Once he was inside the city's invisible barrier, he opened the hatch and stood in its frame, artificial wind blowing through his hair. The houses here were crudely built rectangular settlements about two or three stories tall at the most. The streets were set in a circular grid, all converging at the center. He could see the masses of people milling about in the narrow streets below, oblivious to his presence above them.

He had an odd flashback of some planet whose name he had forgotten—he had floated over a city like this one, filthy and overcrowded, pondering the notion that he had control over every single life he saw wandering those streets below. He could exterminate all of them in a second. That was his mission, after all.

This time, there was no mission or urgent business. He did not have to kill them, but he let the possibility of their death linger for a second longer before moving on.

He left his ship in the air with its shields activated. At the center where all the roads met, one building rose high above the others, a gaudy and colorful palace of sorts. He flew toward it.

Landing on the paved walkway, he looked up at the towering, ornately embellished gates of the palace. They were terribly out of place against the backdrop of the dank and overpopulated city.

"Halt, trespasser!"

He glanced at the armored guards surrounding him. They were all of various reptilian races. It seemed Lord Szemnere was most likely cold-blooded as well, then. But he found it difficult to think of any reptilian race that could be considered remotely beautiful. A Fereshean, perhaps?

"What is your business here, stranger?" one of them snarled.

He noted the weaponry they carried. Standard issue military weapons—probably purchased through the black market, or a lucky raid on some government outpost.

"I am here to see Lord Szemnere," he said calmly.

"Only those who are personally invited by our lord may step past these gates," the guard replied, eyeing him suspiciously. "What is your name?"

"My name—" He hesitated. It suddenly struck him that they had not shot him on sight or cowered at his feet begging for mercy. Did they not recognize his face? Had they never seen the broadcasts of his notoriety across Frieza's empire?

"It does not matter what this man's name is," another one of the guards stated coldly. "Obviously he has not an inkling of respect for Lord Szemnere. Either that or he is too stupid to realize his very presence contaminates the ground on which our lord has walked."

His hand twitched, a second before it touched the bars of the left gate.

"Stop! You are not to enter!"

His hand swiveled to the side, palm aimed directly at the guard who had spoken.

The crack of gunfire sounded. His outstretched hand became a blur as the guards rallied around their comrade and fired on him in unison.

It materialized as a fist when they stopped firing. He swung his arm in a wide arc, opening his palm and flinging its contents outward, not bothering to look as each guard fell with a scream, their own bullets piercing their bodies.

Too easy.

He walked inside the gates. He did not bother wasting his time on fancy bullet-catching games with the new wave of soldiers who rushed at him.

"Where is your lord?" he asked as he sent a blast through the stomach of one of the guards. He spun and kicked another body through a row of ornate columns. "Where is he? Tell him to come out."

They kept coming at him, paying no heed to his orders. He gritted his teeth in annoyance. They fought recklessly, without care for pain or death. Was their belief in their god so strong that it drove them to throw away their lives?

In less than a minute, he had incapacitated all of them. Letting the glow of ki fade from his fists, he looked up at the palace, a delicate construction reminiscent of the once famed courtesan houses of Mirage. Were its walls made of porcelain, he wondered. Its exterior seemed to glimmer under the artificial lights.

He grabbed a soldier who had fallen beside him. "Tell your ruler to come out and face me," he snapped into the reptile's face. It irritated him to see no sign of fear, only hatred. "If he does not, I will tear his walls down around him!"

The soldier had the audacity to spit in his face. He narrowed his eyes in disgust and wrenched apart the guard's jaws, twisting until he heard a loud crack. The body dropped to the ground and lay still.

A soft voice punctuated the silence. "The curses of a hundred demons are bound to you for spilling the blood of my followers."

He turned his gaze to the tall, slim figure standing before him. The man's pale blue skin was swathed in immaculate white robes, the tips of delicate fingers just visible in the folds of his sleeves. Waves of emerald green hair flowed around decorative shoulder plates and framed a fine-boned, distinctly feminine face. Vegeta had only known one of his kind before, and he was long dead.

A smirk curved his lips. "I imagine the souls of your dead followers might be cursing you for being late."

Cool amber eyes watched him without expression. "What have you come here for, stranger?"

Vegeta narrowed his eyes at the utter lack of recognition on the man's face. "You do not know who I am."

"You do not seem to know who I am, either," he responded nonchalantly. "I have faced types like you before. Doubters. Enemies of the true way. In the end they learn who they are dealing with, and that even the mercy of a god has limits."

"As does the lifespan of a liar," Vegeta returned, advancing slowly. He noted a slight twitch in the man's expression. "I am Prince Vegeta of the Saiyans. A race that is long dead, like yours. Caimian."

The amber eyes widened, then settled into mild amusement. "Ah. I suppose my people have not been completely forgotten by this wretched universe."

"They believe you to be a god," Vegeta said, indicating the scattered bodies of dead and wounded soldiers around them. "A god who forsook his place beyond the cosmos to live among the filth of mortals."

"And you believe me to be a liar," Szemnere replied, his voice neutral and soft. "Truth or lies, does it matter when truth is a thing that can be created? For the people of this city, my power has met their desperate need for belief at a perfect junction—the truth that I am a god."

"I don't know whether to laud you for your powers of deception or to pity the utter stupidity of the masses. Perhaps both. Regardless…your race is long extinct. How is it that you are alive?" The pointed question added to the invisible tension already building in the air. Vegeta did not miss the rising ki level of the Caimian standing before him. Their fight would commence soon, but he hoped he did not have to hold a conversation in the midst of combat. It always took the raw edge off a battle.

"I have already told you. I am a god." His airy laugh was accompanied by a light chime of jewelry. The delicate chain adorning his forehead sparkled once before he blurred out of sight.

Vegeta caught his fist a split-second slower than he would have liked, and stopped Szemnere's forward momentum with a sudden outward pulse of ki. He took to the air, putting distance between himself and the white-robed Caimian. In the periphery of his vision he could see thousands already gathered at the gates, initially drawn by Vegeta's rather noisy entrance into the sacred palace grounds. Now they were here to see the match between their god and an unwelcome stranger, and their numbers were growing quickly. Some were kneeling in prayer, others held their arms outstretched in fawning adulation as they watched their ruler's every movement.

They circled each other in the artificial sky, the city's outer barrier humming softly above their heads. His opponent's face was serene, hardly readable if Vegeta had never met one of his kind before.

"It is a pity that your lie—or your truth, if you prefer—will be exposed before all your mindless followers. But I would like to reveal something else to them first," Vegeta said lightly. "The classic Caimian's dilemma: beauty or power?"

The air shook with the momentous force of their fists clashing, the initial step in a familiar dance of risk and mortality. First it was a battle of artful prowess, as each lightning blow was countered and returned, fists and feet blurring through the air, each movement whistling sharply as a hunter's call to his hounds. Lightning was followed by thunder; each delayed boom of their clashing forms shook the barrier of the city, shattered windows and cracked the porcelain walls of the palace. Through the concentrated maelstrom of this first stage, Vegeta could hear the keening cries of the populace down below.

They both drew back, not to catch their breath, but to continue the game of words. He eyed the superficial wound he had inflicted on the man's face. A large bruise was quickly discoloring one pale cheek, and a trickle of blood ran carelessly down from the corner of his mouth.

"You have surpassed the limits of your kind. But how long can you last before you must make the tradeoff?" Vegeta asked with an easy smile.

With a delicate flick of his hand, the self-made lord brushed a stray lock of emerald hair from his eyes.

"This is not the end of my power, Prince Vegeta," he replied, turning his face slightly to the side. The bruise was fading quickly, the injured skin resuming its pale blue tone in seconds. Vegeta raised an eyebrow. Caimians were not naturally fast healers. Not even Saiyans could heal at such a rate.

"You are a hybrid," Vegeta stated. "You have the blood of a Namek or some other healer race in you."

Szemnere let out a sigh of condescension. "Must I keep telling you, my dear Prince?"

The use of that cursed title struck a nerve, tightening the emptiness of Vegeta's smile. The effeminate visage of the Caimian before him blurred easily into the face of another one of that race he had known too well.

A man who had known the location of every bone in his small, five year-old body, and had broken each one in succession, starting with his fingers. _My dear Prince, when will you learn to obey?_

"I am divine, a god of healing. It is the truth—" Szemnere choked, his words cut off by the fingers closing around his windpipe. His amber eyes widened in utter surprise at the Saiyan's impossibly quick movement. Shock turned to fear at the sudden enormous spike in Vegeta's ki.

Vegeta was done playing games. His grip tightened as he flared into Super Saiyan, his aura surrounding both of them in fiery gold.

"Divine healing is useless against me," he said. His voice was like frozen venom. "Now transform."

He threw the man to the ground hundreds of feet below. The impact shattered the gates and sent pieces of heavy masonry flying into the crowd of spectators. A loud chorus of screams broke into heaving coughs as a giant cloud of dust billowed into the air. Vegeta lowered himself slowly to the ground, waiting for Szemnere to get up.

"Transform." He repeated into the dust that clouded his vision. "Let me show them the truth."

With a pulse of his ki, he cleared the air around him of dust. He saw the Caimian half-kneeling in the wide circular indentation created by the impact of his fall. His emerald hair was disheveled, streaked with dirt, the once immaculate white robes stained with blood and grime.

Slowly he stood, his face rising to meet his opponent's.

A deathly hush fell over the crowd. There was no collective gasp of horror, no screams of fear. Only silence as the great secret of their ruler was laid bare before them. The hulking inversion of beauty turned and glared at those who worshipped him as lord and god.

"_This is the wrath of your god_." His voice had dropped a full octave into the gravelly rumble of a reptilian monstrosity. The bloodshot amber eyes flashed, the wide pockmarked snout opened to reveal a row of shark-like teeth. "_This is the form I take before my enemies. Those who do not worship beauty will cower before wrath!_"

His bellowing shout rang in the empty air. Vegeta did not bother to scan the crowd's reaction to Szemnere's continued assertion of divinity in his ascended state. He would break their faith before their eyes.

The second and final stage of the fight began. Their auras blazed blinding white and gold as they charged each other head-on, the resulting backwash of ki throwing the nearest rows of spectators to the ground. Vegeta kicked his power up a notch to keep pace with the increase in Szemnere's level. The Caimian's strength was impressive, and it was a mystery as to how he had managed to surpass the known limits of his race by tenfold. Vegeta would find out in due time. Even in reptilian form, Szemnere was still far below the capacity of a Super Saiyan.

"Not fast enough," he snarled as Szemnere put his whole weight behind a punch and missed, giving Vegeta an opening for attack. He slammed a knee into the Caimian's side, throwing him off balance. Lunging with his right hand, he grabbed a fistful of the man's emerald locks and jumped high into the air. Before the hair ripped at the scalp, he swung his arm downward to throw the reptile to the ground with incredible speed.

"Not strong enough!" He countered Szemnere's upward blast with his own, quickly overpowering it and enveloping his opponent's body in gold fire. He swooped down and sent another blast directly into the man's face, following through with a flurry of devastating blows to the vital organs. It was over soon after that. He shattered ribs, jaws, punctured lungs and kidneys, and finally aimed his hand at the heart.

"Not true enough." His voice was laced with scorn as he stood over the broken, bleeding body of Szemnere in first form. The Caimian no longer had the strength to stay in his ascended state. "Your farce is over."

He turned his eyes to the crowd. They shrank back in terror. His chilling smile widened. "Beauty is only skin-deep, after all."

Some were weeping, hunched over the ground and refusing to look at their fallen lord. Perhaps in genuine sorrow for his defeat, or in pity for their own foolishness. Others stared blankly at the broken, dying man lying at the feet of a golden warrior; Vegeta could see death in their eyes as well. The death of their belief, the basis upon which they had built their lives.

"Here is your god," he declared. No one spoke or moved. The air was rife with their fear; Vegeta breathed it in, relishing it. They had been made acutely aware of his power over their lives, and were free to fear him now that the charlatan's veil covering their eyes had been torn in two.

His hand began to glow. "I will send him back to his realm."

"No…" Szemnere's voice was a soft croak. Vegeta looked down at him in amusement. The man could hardly speak, let alone move. One hand fumbled uselessly at the folds of his torn robe.

"…will give…power…my secret…do not kill…"

Vegeta dug his foot into the Caimian's chest and twisted. He was rewarded with a hoarse scream of pain. "I have already seen your pathetic power and revealed your secret, weak fool—"

He stopped abruptly at the sight of what Szemnere held out in his palm.

"Spare…life…take…and leave…in peace…"

There were four round stones, their faint glow tinted red with the Caimian's blood.

"Where did you…" The question was cut off by another, more urgent thought. "Where are the other three?"


	8. Constructed 2: Convolution

CONSTRUCTED

Chapter 2: Convolution

The planet was a hovel. The dank odor of bodily waste and industrial filth threatened to overload her enhanced senses the moment she stepped outside the ship with Bulma. Her brain quickly adjusted, lessening the acuity of her sense of smell so that she could endure the new environment without retching.

Bulma was not so lucky. Her skin seemed to turn a sickly pallor as she wrinkled her nose and uttered a few choice curses. Trunks was crying uncontrollably in her arms. He had started bawling at the initiation of the rather turbulent landing sequence, and now found himself in another profoundly uncomfortable situation. The Saiyan sense of smell almost rivaled her own, but unfortunately, he did not have the ability to reduce its intensity at will.

"Mama, I wanna go home!"

It was not the first time the boy had exclaimed this. He had been pleading for home for about a week. It had led 18 to wonder again if Bulma was aware of the extent of the consequences her selfishness had caused.

"Trunks, shh, it's okay, Mommy's here with you," Bulma said in as soothing of a tone as she could muster given the overwhelming stench of the place. She held the toddler more tightly. "It's okay, we'll get out of here soon."

"Stay close to me," 18 said quietly. Bulma complied wordlessly, all vestiges of her former hostile attitude gone in the midst of their new circumstances. After 18 had shaken her with the displeasing notion that Vegeta might very well choose not to come back to her at all, Bulma had instantly turned cold toward her, hardly speaking during the ordeal of landing the ship. The woman's mood was fascinatingly mercurial.

18 eyed the hunchbacked, raggedly dressed aliens surrounding them in the landing dock. Bulma had insisted on landing close to a city instead of a place where they would be less conspicuous. Her logic was that if Vegeta had been here, they would find out about his presence more quickly by exploring the urban centers of the planet.

18's logic was that they should keep a low profile in territory they knew nothing about. But Bulma seemed to have complete confidence in her own ability to navigate the unknown as well as 18's ability to deal with any threats. It was too late to conceal themselves, anyhow. They were standing in the landing port, facing an array of aliens of various races. Their attire signified they were technicians. Their eyes were dull, their manner unassuming and uninterested. 18 was thankful. No trouble…yet.

"Where are you from?" one of them asked. It was vaguely humanoid, with glassy black eyes and a disfigured horn protruding from the front of its forehead.

Bulma looked at 18 calmly. She realized that the blue-haired human could not understand the alien's speech. 18's internal computer contained a universal translator chip; apparently it could adapt to languages outside of Earth.

She activated the transmission part of the language software and spoke. "We are from Earth." There was no point in lying. This planet looked hardly able to sustain its own life, let alone threaten other worlds. "We will not stay long, only to look for someone we know."

The alien bowed its head slightly, the horn apparently lighter than it appeared. "You are among many who come here seeking someone. I wish you luck in your search. It will be difficult; there are many refugees here."

Bulma inclined her head in return, not knowing what exactly had transpired but assuming correctly that it was a gesture of politeness. She held Trunks more closely as she and 18 left the docking port and the blank-eyed technician with his fellows. Aside from its stench, the place seemed to be painted in musty shades, as if each color of the spectrum had been muddied with gray.

"What did he say?" Bulma asked when they had walked out of range.

"He said it will be hard to find someone here because there are many refugees."

"Refugees…" Bulma frowned. "From what?"

The landing dock was situated at the end of a long road leading into the city. Poorly constructed shacks and huts of different shapes lined the dirt path. Though her data on extraterrestrials was sparse, 18 was able to identify some of the species she saw huddled inside the run-down dwellings. They were mostly mammalian, with some reptiles among them. There were no insectoid races in sight; she supposed they could burrow underground and thus did not need structures such as these.

Many sets of eyes watched them as they walked by, but none moved forward to stop them or speak with them. Most spared them a cursory glance and returned their gaze to the ground, their posture downcast and languid. Others stared at them longer, perhaps curious to see newcomers who walked upright and seemed intent on getting somewhere.

Trunks had stopped weeping. He stared back at the aliens without saying anything to his mother. It seemed the coddled child was growing bolder now. Perhaps it was his Saiyan blood that enabled him to adapt so quickly to a new, potentially hostile environment.

The city loomed ahead of them, jagged black outlines of crumbling buildings against a polluted gray sky. The shoddy huts grew more numerous as they neared it. Bulma seemed to squirm uncomfortably under the gaze of so many aliens.

"They're all refugees…from Frieza?" she said.

"You know what this planet used to be," 18 stated matter-of-factly. "A weigh-in station on the periphery of Frieza's empire. Perhaps with the collapse of the empire, the planet fell into disrepair."

"A lot of planets formerly under Frieza's rule could look like this now," Bulma mused. "Maybe even worse. People could have fled here to try to start over. A planet on the fringes of the empire would be less likely to get caught in a struggle for power or the anarchy that usually follows the collapse of an empire."

Her reasoning was sound. 18 had reached the same conclusion.

"You mentioned that this planet is called 79, right?" Bulma asked.

"Yes."

"I wonder if it's still called that. Since Frieza's gone, the people here could have renamed it. Who would want their world to be labeled with just a number…"

She stopped abruptly, looking ashamed. "I'm sorry, 18, I didn't mean…"

"No offense taken," she responded lightly. "Who would want just a number for a name?"

"I'm sorry…"

"It doesn't matter, really."

They walked on in awkward silence. The heiress seemed to be brooding guiltily over her careless statement. 18 thought of the implications of such a planet's name.

What it had been called before was of no significance. Its history, its indigenous people, the memory in its soil—all had most likely been wiped out or suppressed by Frieza's takeover. It was now populated with outsiders, those who had no knowledge or care for what this place had been before it had become Planet 79. They could not be blamed, either; they were only looking to survive, to build their meager homes on relatively safe ground.

She had no memory or history of her life before she had taken on the number 18. Thanks to the actions of one ambitious scientist, she was a walking blank slate. It seemed no one cared about what she had been before. Not even Krillin. The only other being who could understand her situation was her brother, and he actively refused to care about their past. That left her on her own, uncertain about her origins and whether or not she should even let the thought bother her. Did it matter? Everything seemed to say it didn't.

"It will be faster if we fly," Bulma said quietly, breaking the silence.

"Do you want to risk it?" 18 asked neutrally. She scanned the area around them. The ki levels of the refugees were almost negligible.

"I don't know. Whatever you think is best," she said. Her tone was uncharacteristically submissive, still tinted with guilt.

She looped an arm around Bulma's waist and took to the air gently, making sure not to jostle the toddler too much. A smile appeared on his face for the first time in a long while. He apparently enjoyed the sensation of flying.

"Faster! Faster!" Trunks crowed, wagging his chubby fist at 18.

"Trunks, we're going fast enough. Don't bother Auntie 18," Bulma scolded.

"The boy takes after his parents," 18 commented. "Impatient and demanding."

There was a second of pause, and Bulma burst out laughing. "Thanks, 18. I don't think I've ever heard you make a joke at my expense before. Actually, I don't think I've ever heard you joke around."

"I didn't think it was that amusing," she said impassively. "It's just an observation."

They reached the city without trouble. Though the power levels of the denizens were low, too low to enable them to fly, it was apparent that flying was not an extraordinary sight to them. The streets were crowded, and there were more species here than 18 thought imaginable. Some shuffled along on dozens of legs like insects, yet had humanoid faces. Others crawled low on all fours, only slightly faster than two-legged races. One of the strangest she saw was an alien with two heads facing in opposite directions, their necks planted in the middle of a spherical body. None of them took notice of Bulma and 18. All seemed to have their own business to attend to in this dank corner of the city.

"Now how do we start looking…" Bulma said, biting her lip in thought. "Can you sense him anywhere?"

18 concentrated, ignoring the press of various power levels around her. "No, I can't."

"What are we going to do, fly to every rotting city on this planet to try to find him?" she said. "I guess there's no better way than to just start asking?"

"I don't think—"

"Excuse me," Bulma said, setting Trunks down and blocking the path of a short, squat humanoid alien that appeared old by Earth's standards. "I'm looking for someone and I was hoping you could help."

The alien stared up at her blankly with watery green eyes. Realizing it could not understand her, she started to make hand signals instead, looking rather comical in her attempt to describe without words the person she was looking for. She traced a widow's peak on her forehead and pointed at her hair with her hands, forming imaginary spikes with gestures. The alien seemed to growl in exasperation and pushed past her.

"Vegeta," she said his name half-heartedly as the stranger walked away. "Jeez, how am I ever going to find that son of a bitch?

"Bulma," 18 said warningly.

The alien had turned back around and was staring at her with wide eyes. "Veh-jee-tah," it repeated slowly, the name sounding strange in its native tongue.

"You shouldn't have said his name," 18 hissed. "Don't you remember who he was, what his name could mean to these people?"

Bulma looked aghast at her grave mistake. "Shit, I'm an idiot."

The alien was speaking rapidly now, catching the attention of those around them. Several heads turned and followed the direction in which the alien's hand was pointing. 18 automatically tensed, moving closer to Bulma to defend her and Trunks in case something happened.

"What is it saying?" Bulma asked anxiously.

18 listened for a second longer. "The alien you spoke to realizes you're looking for Vegeta. It's…apparently no one has seen Vegeta for years and he's been presumed dead. On Namek. It wants to know how you know him."

The alien was spluttering now, waving its short stubby arms wildly and drawing even more attention. Others caught what it was saying and glared viciously at Bulma and 18. Their gaze swept over the toddler as well. The situation was quickly turning ugly. Bulma suddenly scooped Trunks up and shoved him into 18's arms, her eyes roving frantically over the crowd. She huddled close to 18, one hand fisted tightly in her own hair. Her face was a mask of anguish and panic, as if terrified of the press of bodies around them.

"Tell them I've lost my mind because Vegeta took my homeworld," she said in an uneven, hysterical tone. 18 understood immediately. The aliens did not know Earth languages and thus would only hear the incoherent babbling of a madwoman.

18 held Trunks closely, making sure his tail was hidden, and turned to the hostile people closing in around them. "I am sorry. She is unstable. She often asks where the monster that burned our world is, thinking she can somehow exact revenge. I am sorry she has upset you. We mean no harm."

They looked at her with suspicion, but did not advance further. One of them, an amphibious creature, spoke in a reedy voice. "We have all suffered at the hands of that monster and his abominable master. But we do not speak his name! It defiles the air even more than the waste and filth here."

Another spoke directly to Bulma. "He is dead, you fool. Be grateful and shut your delicate mouth. Do not stir up ghosts with his name."

She stared dumbly back at him, playing the part of a madwoman. 18 tugged at her arm and drew her away from the group of aliens. When they were out of hearing range, she translated the tense conversation for her.

"I knew he was hated," Bulma said, exhaling shakily. "But not this much! They won't even say his name?"

18 said nothing, letting the other woman come to a fuller understanding of the situation.

"I'm sorry. I put us in danger with my stupidity," she said, shaking her head at herself. "I'm really sorry."

"Stop apologizing and think harder before you act," 18 said curtly. "Now we—"

A hand touched the small of her back and lingered there. She whirled and came face to face with an ugly creature that looked half-human, half-feline. Its eyes were round and yellow like a cat's, situated too close over a narrow snout, but the shape of its hairy, muscular arms and legs resembled a human's.

The translator chip fed his words into her brain. It was obviously male, and he desired her. The hand that had rested on her back reached up to stroke her face.

Her hand clamped around his wrist before it could touch her again. She frowned in disgust at his leering smile. He thought she was playing games. He brought up his other hand in a lightning-quick movement to snatch Trunks from her arms—but she moved faster, shattering the bones of his wrist beneath her steel grip.

He howled in pain and rage, cradling his broken wrist and snarling at her. She broke his jaw with a vicious backhand strike. Whirling on her heel, she led Bulma briskly away from the incapacitated alien.

"You've got universal appeal, 18," Bulma tried to joke.

"Shut up," she snapped.

She never wanted to be touched like that again. The toddler in her arms suddenly became an unwanted object, a cursed reminder of what could have been in a life where she had a husband who often touched her in such a way. She suppressed the urge to toss Trunks away like discarded garbage. She could not even give him to Bulma for fear that the woman could not defend him in a dangerous situation. A sick feeling twisted her gut.

"Well, I guess we should leave this place," Bulma sighed. "If no one even says Ve…his name, then I guess there's no chance he came here. I just don't know where to head next…"

"I don't know either," she said brusquely. "I'll take us back to the ship now."

The child had begun coughing, apparently sensitive to the air in the city. 18 let out a cough as well, thinking she might vomit from prolonged exposure to the contaminated air and the unsavory experience of being felt up by an alien. She lifted Bulma in her free arm and flew them back over the road leading to the landing dock.

* * *

There was a light knock on her door. She did not move for several seconds, continuing to stare at the ceiling while lying in bed.

"18." Bulma's voice was subdued, almost blending in with the drone of the ship's engines outside the walls. "Can I come in?"

"Yes," she answered tonelessly.

The other woman walked in quietly, dressed in sleeping clothes that were too large for her thinning frame. Bulma had lost a considerable amount of weight since they had embarked on this mission, one of the side-effects of space travel for those who were not accustomed to it.

She sat down on one end of the bed, shifting the mattress slightly. 18 did not look at her.

"Do you want to talk?"

Had this woman learned anything about her over the past few weeks?

"No," she said. She did not elaborate.

Bulma persisted, as expected. "I'm sorry I made us go to that planet, 18. It was a waste of time. We didn't find out anything except for the fact that Vegeta's one of the most hated people in the galaxy…"

"I told you to stop apologizing."

She could sense the heiress bristle slightly at those words, visibly struggling against offering a retort. Bulma almost never took orders or less-than-polite statements from anyone, except perhaps the Saiyan prince.

She relaxed fairly quickly, fixing an impassive gaze on 18 before speaking again in a quieter voice. "I've had that happen to me a lot before, you know. Men approaching me with bad intentions. It's disgusting what some of them are like…hitting on me even when I have Trunks by my side."

18 stayed silent, letting her continue with her attempt at consolation, addressing the problem the woman imagined was plaguing her. Bulma was still unaware that she understood next to nothing about the cyborg.

"They say beauty is a curse sometimes," Bulma said, smiling wryly. "We've both been blessed with it. Just don't take it personally when men try to take advantage of that."

18 chose not to comment. "Where are we going next?"

Bulma paused for a second, looking away in an obvious attempt to hide her disappointment that 18 had ignored her offer of comfort. "I don't know, honestly. I've been thinking for a while and I have to admit this is one of the most poorly planned trips I've ever taken."

_At least you realize it now. _"When you decide, let me know." 18 rolled onto her side, facing away from Bulma. It signified the end of their conversation.

Her ears caught the light sigh that escaped from Bulma's lips. "You don't seem to be feeling well, 18. I hope you get a lot of rest; there's nowhere important we have to be for now."

She left her alone then. 18 lay still, staring into the darkness. She could hear the muffled sound of running water in the next room as Bulma readied herself for bed. The petulant wail of a child reached her ears but died down after a minute. There was the soft click of a light switch, and complete silence followed soon after that.

She counted the endlessly progressing minutes and seconds in her head. A pointless exercise. Time was always ticking in her internal clock, exact and unwavering. The timer had started from zero the moment she had been activated by Gero. She remembered everything that had transpired from that second forward with absolute clarity. But before that…there was nothing. Nothing existed before that first mental mark – 0:00:00:00:01.

She rose from her bed soundlessly and made her way to the bathroom. The dizziness in her head told her she was seriously dehydrated. Splashing water over her feverish face, she washed off the dirt and dried sweat that had accumulated over the course of the day on the polluted planet. She cupped her hands under the faucet and drank until her thirst was quenched. Her skin was mildly cooler.

She stopped outside the bathroom, eyes focusing on the two identical closed doors in front of her. She opened the one on the right.

The boy and his mother were sound asleep on separate beds. Blue hair strewn haphazardly over the pillow, Bulma lay half-curled on her side, facing the wall. The side of Trunks' bed was lined with pillows to prevent him from falling to the floor if he moved around too much. She could hear the boy's soft snores from the doorway.

She approached silently, her bare feet chilled by the cool metal floor. The oversized t-shirt Bulma had given her hung loosely on her frame; she tugged at the fabric draped over her left shoulder before it could slip further down.

_You're beautiful. You know that, right?_

She brushed several strands of her back from her face, the movement causing her shirt to slip once again from her shoulder.

_And our child will be too._

She looked down at the sleeping toddler. He lay naked on his stomach, having kicked off the covers Bulma tended to wrap too tightly around him. His furry tail was curled loosely around one chubby wrist.

She closed her eyes for a brief moment. It was apparent that she was not feeling well, but she had not expected the feeling to last this long after their departure from the planet of refugees. Her system should have recovered by now.

_You'll be holding our baby—our creation—in your arms soon. Please listen to me…_

She stood motionlessly in the darkness beside the sleeping child. What was she supposed to recover from? Was it still the memory of that day that plagued her, a thorn that had somehow embedded itself within her psychological functioning and would not disintegrate? What had happened was over, gone, just like the unpleasant encounter with the feline alien. Nothing in the past could be changed. There was no use in reliving it, no use in remembering or feeling.

Yet she could not forget. It was not possible for her to forget any detail in her history after the timer had ticked past zero.

_I'm going to be a father. I mean…we're going to be parents._

_Wouldn't it actually be nice to have meals as a family once the baby's here?_

_18…we're in this together, right? We're both going to take care of the child. I just want you both to be safe._

She put a hand to her head, as if the touch of her palm could ease the dull ache that had started soon after they had left the planet. Why remember now? Even when she had still been on Earth, living with her brother, she had been able to shut the memories away. Ignoring was an act of the will. But now, though she willed them to stop, they continued to flow freely from the stores of her brain.

_Do you really feel concern for that…the baby? Or are you just trying to convince yourself that you do?_

_You feel nothing._

_Don't lie to yourself._

The child slept on dreamlessly, oblivious to her presence. He looked alien to her, as foreign as the beings they had encountered on Planet 79. A human at the beginning of life, as life was supposed to begin. Her life had begun in adulthood, the 20 years preceding her activation a complete mystery.

She would not have been able to be a mother. Her brother had been right. She had felt no concern, no care, none of the feelings that came naturally to human females during pregnancy.

_There's something else, though_.

_Relief._

She had felt relief, even gratitude. The relentless defenses of her body had saved her from the path she had tried to walk for a year with Krillin. A path that would have ended eventually in worse ways than what had happened that day in Kame House. It was predetermined; she had awoken a machine, and she was incapable of returning to humanity. The construct of her body could not be altered; she had never been meant to change. The fact that she still existed now was already an abnormality in her proper functioning. She had been made to meet a singular goal, and she had never accomplished it.

Every machine was made for a purpose and had an algorithm behind the turning of its gears. What was hers now? 17 seemed to believe it was irrelevant to ask.

Why had she agreed to help Bulma? What was the point of defending the woman and her child? They were not vital to her existence.

She did not know if her own existence was vital in the first place.

What was she doing here?

Both of her hands clutched at the sides of her head. She knew she was unwell. The questions were uninvited. She had never experienced such lack of mental control before.

The child stirred in his sleep, his tail unfurling from his wrist. His soft snores had stopped.

_I'm sorry, Krillin._

_What? 18, what's wrong?_

She had reached out her hand and struck the back of his neck. He had fallen limply to the floor, but she knew he would not be unconscious for long.

_All of you, get out. Yamucha, take Krillin._

_Why did you do that?! What's going on, 18?_

None of them had understood. Their ignorance was painted clearly in their fearful eyes. She explained what would happen in stark, simple terms. With shaking hands Yamucha moved Krillin's prone body out of the room, and returned with a look of abject terror in his eyes.

She had heard that fear was entwined with uncertainty, when one had no idea of what could or would happen.

Terror was when one knew exactly what was coming.

She stared down at Bulma's child, his exposed skin pale against the dimness of the room. The shadow of her body darkened half of his bed, covering part of his sleeping form. She stepped closer, and the shadow seeped over his face like dark blood.

There had been so much blood.

And such silence.

Silence she never wanted to hear again.

The ache in her temples stopped. She took one hand away from her head and brought it down on the child in front of her.

The slice was quick and clean. The boy did not stir.

She grasped the severed tail in her hand. Slowly she backed away from the bed, careful not to make any noise so that the mother would not wake and see what she had done. She would reason with Bulma in the morning.

She had not cut off the entire appendage; the root was still there, and thus it had the potential of growing back. For now, it was too dangerous for the boy to have a full-length tail that could be easily spotted. She had realized this in the city, when Bulma had attracted unwelcome attention with her careless words. As they had flown back to the ship, she had decided on the best time to remove the problem.

She exited the bedroom quietly and turned to face the empty hallway, resting her back against the closed door.

Had that been emotion? A flurry of memories and images, clashing against her will? Was emotion merely uncontrollable thought?

Logic, controlled and calculated, had reasserted itself as soon as her headache had receded. Her skin was no longer feverish. Strange—had that been illness?

She walked toward her room, deciding to conduct a full-system scan in the morning after she had rested.

Her hand would not turn the door handle. She stared, confused, down the length of her arm to the ends of her fingers. The limb was frozen. Her other arm suddenly hung limply at her side, the severed tail dropping soundlessly from her slackened grip to the floor.

Her eyes widened in consternation as her thought processes sped up, trying to pinpoint what was happening, why she was experiencing a partial shutdown. Her face jerked to the side mechanically, as if by its own will, and she began walking away from the door, down the hall. Her legs were striding forward, uncontrolled, her torso held rigidly in place by some unseen force. She opened her mouth to shout, to alert Bulma, but it closed quickly as she lost control of her facial muscles as well.

She was moving toward the hatch. She saw the open door through eyes that she could no longer blink. She saw that another ship had connected to theirs. Somehow the defensive shields had been breached without setting off the alarm, and someone was waiting for her to walk through the door.

Virus, she realized too late.

She had been infected with a virus.


	9. Connate 2: Conscience

CONNATE

Chapter 2: Conscience

"For as long as we have existed, we have had the Dragonballs, or _xarai-ethel_, as they are called in our language. But not merely one set. At one time, all Nameks created them. It was a natural process, as you described yourself.

"When a child came of age, he would create his own set of _xarai-ethel_. The age varied for every child, as every person reaches maturity at a different point. But when children began to understand the significant questions in life, they could conceive of a force tied to their soul that had until then lain dormant. Conceptualized visually, that force was a dragon. It materialized at the same time the child began to grasp the knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil, life and death.

"But as soon as the dragon appeared for the first time in the eyes of the child, its essence would solidify and encase itself within seven orbs. The orbs would then scatter across the planet, as you first saw with your Dragonballs on Earth.

"The child's village would hold a public ceremony for him, a celebration of his coming of age, and the initiation of the rite that would take him the rest of his life to fulfill. It was a journey to find the seven _xarai-ethel_ he had created. He was told of the lessons he would learn and experience personally, and the choice that he would face at the end of his journey.

"We had no advanced technology then, nor was it necessary," Moori said. Piccolo realized he was talking about the Dragonball radar Bulma had invented. "The purpose of the journey was not to find them quickly, use them to gratify earthly desires, and then repeat the process as many times as possible. It was a sacred journey of discovery, a pilgrimage of sorts, to the center of one's soul. Such an endeavor was not to be taken lightly. It was expected to take most of one's life to accomplish, after all.

"Thus, each Namek lived most of his life constantly moving around the planet, experiencing all the natural wonders and forms of beauty the world had to offer. He met many others on the way, made close friends to walk beside in the search for their respective _xarai-ethel_, and learned the value of the life he had been given. Along the way, one inevitably came to realize the depth of his own imperfection, his flaws, mistakes and sins.

"And he would realize that he was not free, could not be free by the mere virtue of his existence. Most of all, he could not be free from himself—all the uncertainties resulting from his choices, the small and great evils he was capable of, the dark intentions and thoughts he harbored that were too shameful to disclose to others.

"The yearning for freedom would begin after this realization, and it would continue to grow stronger until one reached the end of his journey. The elders of the village had told him of all these things at his initiation, but he had not understood then, this thing that lay at the core of all trials. It was like a constant thirst for water, intensifying each year as he realized ever more clearly his need for it.

"Our original world was quite vast, as you saw for yourself, and much of the terrain was difficult to navigate. Many more years would inevitably pass before one could collect all seven of the orbs he had set out so long ago to find. He would become acquainted with suffering, both physical and spiritual, and long to be fulfilled, knowing the only thing that could grant him peace was the union of the _xarai-ethel_.

"And when he finally found all seven, the dragon he had seen only in a flash of vision in childhood would materialize before him, bow its head in acknowledgement that he had at last completed his life's journey, and offer to grant him one wish.

"One wish, unlike the two or three that are possible with the Dragonballs in existence today. There would be no second chances, as the search had already taken most of one's life. But then, most Nameks had already decided what their one wish would be long before the end of their journey.

"They would wish for freedom. The granting of such a wish cannot be described in words. How can one describe the gaining of freedom when it is not a solid object that can be grasped? But the dragons granted this wish to all who asked for it.

"Once the wish was granted, the _xarai-ethel_ would scatter once again, but there would be no need to gather them a second time. Nameks returned to their home villages to settle permanently. Some had children, who would eventually go off on their own journey. The knowledge of the one wish that lay at the core of all yearning was passed down from generation to generation. Thus, we were able to live in peace with each other and with ourselves."

Piccolo was silent, digesting all this with a mix of wonder and doubt. The story was nothing like he had expected. The elder watched him with a small smile, waiting for him to speak. One of Namek's suns was setting, half-visible through the window, casting long shadows across the mat between them.

Moori must have caught the skepticism in his eyes. "I will answer what questions you have to the best of my knowledge."

"I find it hard to believe everyone wished for the same thing," Piccolo said. "Some could have chosen to make a different wish. And weren't there any who found the Dragonballs without making that ultimate realization you described? What about those who died before finding all seven?"

"One question at a time," Moori chuckled. Piccolo suppressed a frown at being spoken to like a child. "Yes, some could have chosen to make a different wish, and perhaps some did. My father did not tell me about those who deviated from the norm. I do know that the predominant choice was for freedom, and that our people enjoyed a long age of peace. We did not wage war in those days, and were never in material need.

"To answer your second question—there is an intrinsic characteristic of the Dragonballs that you appear to be unaware of, perhaps because you have always gathered them out of expediency instead of spiritual reflection." The old eyes twinkled. "Have you ever looked closely at the stars within each orb?"

"No." The thought startled him, that the stars were more than mere decorations.

"They reveal many things," Moori said. "No two beholders will have the same experience when seeing them—truly seeing them. And each orb is different."

"What does that have to do with my question?"

"Patience," he said gently. "You asked if there were any who found all seven without experiencing the epiphany. The answer is no. At the initiation ceremony in one's village, one would learn of the powers that lay within each separate orb. Each time he found one of the _xarai-ethel_, he would look within it and be changed. Those stars reflect truth, powerful in both its complexity and simplicity. They may reveal the beholder's greatest insecurities, flaws, fears, pride, folly, all that he loves and holds dear, all that he regrets and hates, all that he wishes he could have and become…and the things that have made him who he is. Looking into one orb alone is enough to shake a man's soul. One cannot see all seven and remain unchanged."

"So the stars basically coerce you into changing in some fundamental way," Piccolo said skeptically.

"Can one be coerced by the truth?" Moori questioned. "The truth merely illuminates our choices, showing us the paths we might take that were hidden before, or the end of the path we are currently treading, which may end in destruction. It does not force us to turn back or to choose a new road. I believe the Earthlings have this saying as well: 'the truth will set you free.' Here is what that axiom means. Knowledge of the truth allows one to make better choices, choices that might have previously seemed absurd or impossible given one's former ignorance."

Piccolo said nothing.

"I do not know the answers to all your questions," Moori admitted easily. "As to those who died before finding all seven, I do not know of their fate. Their _xarai-ethel_ perished with them, of course. But as our people have always said, God is merciful."

Piccolo chose not to comment on that last statement. He had known his people were mystics who believed in some higher god, but he had always been unsure how they could reconcile their faith with the fact that most of the deities in the other realm were pathetically weak and incompetent.

"I'm not too keen on the philosophical trimmings of this story," he said instead. "The freedom issue seems rather inflated."

"Well. What do you think freedom is?" The elder's voice was soft, unassuming.

He paused for a second, considering. "To be able to do what one wants."

"Is that it?"

"What else is there? Freedom from imperfections and 'sins,' as you said?"

"Yes, that is part of it," Moori said. Piccolo could sense the beginning of another lecture. "You might say there are two forms of freedom. Freedom 'to,' and freedom 'from.'

"The former is often thought of as free choice. The freedom to do what one wishes, as you stated. But then, our freedom is never complete, as our choices are always constrained by circumstances—our own inadequacy and weaknesses, lack of knowledge, and the coercive hand of external actors.

"The latter is often conceived of as liberation. Every individual longs to be free from the ills that plague him and the chains that bind him. The poor long to be free from poverty, the sick long to be free from disease, the guilty long to be free from guilt, the oppressed long to be free from oppression, and so on.

"The edges separating these two are often blurred. My freedom to do as I wish may actually infringe on the second type of freedom. In an extreme case, I may exercise free choice and murder my brother, but the consequences of my act will likely be additional chains barring me from freedom."

Piccolo cut in. "I understand. You would be burdened by fear of punishment, guilt, the hatred of others, and so on. But why use such an extreme case to prove your point? It's feasible that we limit our own freedom every time we make a choice."

"Perhaps not every choice, but many," Moori said. "The important ones especially. Like your choice to come here."

"My choice to…"

"You operated on limited information and made the decision to come to Namek on your own. You left Gohan and everyone else, not knowing where the alien threat was and whether or not it would return, maybe even to destroy Earth. Is that not a burden?"

"I made the most sensible choice," Piccolo said.

"How can you be sure? You were operating on limited information."

"I suppose I can't know," he said shortly.

"Then what exactly is true freedom?"

Piccolo considered for a second. "To be able to have both forms of freedom at the same time."

"But…"

"But it's not possible because of outside forces and our own inadequacies," Piccolo said. "Yet the dragons somehow made it possible?"

"The dragons are the embodiment of man's free will in the absence of all constraints. Nothing was impossible for the dragons of old, unlike those of today," Moori said. "There is a wish woven into the fabric of every living being's soul, a yearning that never dies but is at the same time impossible for mortals to fulfill. It is this most impossible wish that the dragons were able to grant as part of the wish for freedom.

"All life reaches for immortality. From the simplest single-celled organism to the most advanced sentient race, every being longs to live forever. Though Frieza, Vegeta, and many others sought to achieve eternal life by an explicit wish, it is already an implicit yearning implanted within the most basic gears of functioning of every living being. To the very end, our bodies fight against death even if our minds are ready to pass on. The wish for freedom encompasses freedom from death, the ultimate chain that binds all living things."

"But everyone who made such a wish died anyway," Piccolo pointed out. "Unless they're still walking around somewhere on this planet and I haven't noticed them."

"There is more than one kind of death, Piccolo," Moori said. "Most seem to consider physical death as the only kind, but you and I both know that our souls continue to exist after our bodies perish."

"So the other kind is soul-death. Is that a polite way of saying someone's going to Hell?"

"It means that one remains unfree even after physical death."

"Frankly, this all sounds like a load of theological bullshit," Piccolo growled. "None of it amounts to anything concrete."

Moori sighed. The setting sun cast shadows across his aged face, the wrinkles in his skin appearing as dark crevices.

"Piccolo, have you ever seen a Namek in the other world?"

Piccolo paused. "No. But there are countless souls in that realm; finding someone of our race would be like spotting a speck in the ocean."

"In addition to that, there are very few of our race in the other world to begin with. But the reason for this…what would you think if I told you that at one time, there were no Nameks in the other world?"

The though suddenly unnerved him. "I'd ask how you could know that, and where their souls went if not to Heaven or Hell."

Moori smiled. His next question was just as unexpected as almost everything else that had passed through his lips in the past hour. "Piccolo, do you believe in God?"

He raised one brow. "I don't have to believe. I know there are gods," he said slowly.

"You know I am not speaking of the Kais." Moori's voice was quieter, more serious. "Do you believe that there is a force greater than the Kais…the first creator, the final judge?"

Piccolo shook his head. "It was never relevant to me. I've never considered it."

"You may find it is more relevant than you think. From where do you think the dragons draw their power? The power to alter the fabric of space-time itself? To free life from death?"

"So the dragons are some kind of channel of this force's power?"

"They are the bridge."

"You know I don't have much patience left," Piccolo said with a frown. "What are you really saying?"

"They are the bridge between the mortal plane and the realm beyond, from which no one who has entered has ever returned. The one wish that our ancestors made allowed them to cross over to that realm after death."

"You and I have both returned from that realm, Moori. We've been wished back. Unless you're talking about some other plane…"

Moori smiled again. Piccolo said nothing.

He chose to drop the subject once more. He did not want to go on and offend the elder or initiate some hopeless debate over whether such a being existed in the first place. The hard evidence was clearly stacked against Moori's belief. There was no way to know for sure that at some point there were no Nameks in the other realm. This "God" had never spoken or made its presence known as far as Piccolo was concerned. He was not one to believe in things that he could not affirm with his own senses.

In the past hour he had learned much, but still he failed to see how any of it was relevant to the matter at hand. Time was not an abundant commodity; he had to get to the core of whatever Moori knew that might be useful to him.

"So how did everything change? There are only two sets of Dragonballs now, and none of the other Nameks have made any."

"Ah. Come outside with me, and I will tell you the rest of the story. We have been sitting inside long enough." The elder rose from the mat and looked through another window at the planet's second sun, which was now rising.

They left his home and flew slowly over the mountains surrounding the village. Piccolo noted the odd shape of the trees lining the slopes, the branches curved into a spherical shape. This world was remarkably similar to old Namek; the familiarity had probably made it easier for their race to thrive again.

"This is much like the world in which your grandsire lived," Moori said, his robes flapping gently in the wind as they gained altitude.

"You knew him?" Piccolo said.

"No. The only older Namek I ever knew was my father," Moori replied. "I was his oldest child, the firstborn in the age after the great cataclysm."

Piccolo could remember little of his sire's childhood; from the blurred images of his earliest memories, he could not discern any coherent string of events. The feeling of those vague, formless memories, however, was like a bitter aftertaste; from that alone he knew that his progenitor's departure from Namek must not have been pleasant. He remembered the distinct smell of burning.

"Before my younger brothers were born, I enjoyed the full attention of my father, and from what he told me later, I was a very inquisitive child. I wanted to know everything—why there were only two of us in the entire world, what had happened to his own father and the rest of our people. He told me many stories, almost everything he could remember from his life before the cataclysm. I realized later that his memory was the extent of Namek's history. There was no one else but him to remember what our people had been like for thousands of years."

"Was it just a natural disaster?" Piccolo asked. "A meteor storm?"

"No. Natural disasters are not selective about their survivors."

Piccolo looked at him sharply. "Guru was selected to live? Out of an entire race of people?"

"Yes. Except for those who somehow escaped, like your father."

"Was it an invasion then? A war?"

"It was not wrought by nature or man," Moori said simply. "It was divine judgment."

Piccolo was silent and let the elder speak. Already he thought it had to be myth, diluted and refashioned through the years until little factual information remained. But he would hear what Moori had come to believe.

"The long age of peace ended when foreign ships descended from the skies and we encountered the outside universe for the first time. We believed them to be gods at first, but quickly discovered they were mere mortals like us. They could die, because they killed each other over our planet."

"For the Dragonballs," Piccolo surmised.

Moori nodded sadly. He was slowing, nearing the top of the highest mountain as far as Piccolo could see. "The wars were long and bloody. We had always been a peaceful race. We had never seen living beings capable of such barbarism and cruelty, and we had never experienced the tortures of slavery before then. Many died in the crossfire between opposing armies, or took their own lives rather than fall captive. Many also died as maltreated slaves before their captors realized the Dragonballs died along with their creators. It grew worse after that. We were not allowed to die. Many were confined to small cells for the rest of their lives as kings, generals, rogue soldiers, and all sorts of enterprising individuals raced to find as many sets of _xarai-ethel_ as possible. And the children…some were too young to even speak when they were taken captive and raised like farm animals, waiting for their coming of age and the formation of a new set of Dragonballs.

"The dragons' power could not be used to their fullest extent by outsiders, as the dragons were tied to their creators' souls alone. Still, they wished for many things out of greed, the thirst for power, malice, jealousy, revenge…

"Our people learned to fight soon after that, with our natural physical strength and high ki level. We fought hard and overthrew many of our captors, and even managed to take back our homeworld. We still lived in a constant state of war. Our whole way of life was changed, overturned. Most stopped having offspring, no longer able to afford time and energy on raising young. Youths no longer embarked on their lifelong journeys of spiritual discovery; the Dragonballs were no longer used in the old way, with that one wish to grant freedom. And our people found that the dragons had become limited. Without the will to discover truth and self, without time to reflect on what each orb had to reveal, we lost the full extent of the dragons' power. Wishes were now used to fight wars, to increase firepower and defenses, to thwart enemy plans.

"Soon after, we became just like our enemies, pursuing riches, power, vengeance, the wide spectrum of worldly desires and corrupt ends. We no longer cared about the root problem that remained within our souls, and chose to live unfree rather than to die free.

"Some betrayed our people, selling their _xarai-ethel_, a precious part of their souls, to outsiders willing to pay handsome sums for possession of the orbs. Many moved off-world, and thus their _xarai-ethel_ scattered across new planets, new systems far away from Namek. It seemed that every world that became aware of the existence of Namek added itself to the war, a universal war over wishes."

They landed on the peak of the mountain; it was a small plateau, covered in hard ice. The air was bitingly cold, but strangely still.

"What happened then?" Piccolo asked, looking through the clouds and mist that swathed the land below.

"The great cataclysm," Moori said into the stillness of the air. "It did not shake Namek alone, but every world that had been touched by the Dragonballs. The landscape of the universe was drastically altered in the span of one Earth month."

Piccolo paused. There were too many questions clamoring in his mind. "Why is it that no one knows of any of this? Even Frieza didn't seem to know anything about the Dragonballs until a few years ago."

"No survivors were left to tell."

Piccolo was unnerved at the chill that ran down his spine. It was not borne from the cold air.

Billions…trillions, perhaps, had died…

"And Guru was the only…"

"He was the only known survivor."

"Every race that was involved in the war was wiped out?"

"I do not know. Perhaps not all of each race was wiped out, but only those who had aspired to abuse the dragons' power. In any case, it is apparent now that the knowledge of the Dragonballs was lost very quickly in the wake of the cataclysm. Collective memory is a peculiar thing. The devastation from the cataclysm was on an unimaginable scale, far worse than what the war had wrought. The traumatic memory of such an event is sufficient to warp history itself. History, after all, is the account of those who survive to tell about it."

Piccolo looked at the elder with a level gaze. "How is it remembered, then?"

"Every race has a different name for it, and on many worlds it has become legend, acquiring a sort of fantastical status. Most remember it as a massacre of epic proportions. Some believe it was divine cleansing, while others believe it was an outpouring of evil."

"And what caused it?"

Moori was silent for a second. He walked slowly to the center of the plateau on the mountain peak. "He met my father on the highest mountain of old Namek. I imagine it was much like this one."

"He?"

"He came to Namek last," Moori said softly. "The executioner, _tsa'in Azrathi_."

Piccolo stared at the ground under his feet, covered in a layer of ice and rock. The tale was growing more fantastical by the second. The thought that one being could be responsible for bringing the entire universe to the brink of destruction, in the span of a month, no less, was impossible.

"My father was one of the only free youths who had yet to create a set of _xarai-ethel_. His own father had been about to sell him to an alien warlord in exchange for great wealth. By then the news of widespread destruction by the hands of a godlike being had reached Namek. Some fled for their lives immediately; others, like your grandsire, could only afford to send their children off-world, not themselves. Many stayed out of foolishness and a false sense of invincibility stemming from their possession of a set of Dragonballs.

"My grandfather was still unwilling to let go of the bargain he had struck for his own gain. The arranged spot for completing the transaction with the warlord was the base of the highest peak on Namek."

He turned away from Piccolo as he looked over the edge of the plateau to the ground thousands of feet below. "Before my father was put in chains, the base of the mountain was split in half as if by lightning, blinding him on the spot. In the next second, he found himself at the top of the mountain, on an icy plateau such as this one. He cowered there, paralyzed with fear, as the deafening sound of earthquakes grew to fill his entire range of hearing. The world shook apart beneath him, and he could not see it.

"When it ended, there was complete silence, the sound of a world utterly destroyed and cleared of life."

Moori's eyes were closed as he continued. "Then he came to my father, the last Namek left alive."

The chill in his spine seemed to have solidified into a block of ice. Piccolo could not doubt Guru's testimony; the deceased elder had told his son all of this firsthand. Could it be…was Guru the only source of historical truth in the universe?

"My father could not see him, as he had been blinded. But he could feel his presence; he said his life force was unimaginable in its power. Greater than Frieza's, greater than even Son Goku's.

"He told my father that the universe was not at its end, but another beginning. That it all would have ended if people had been allowed to continue abusing the _xarai-ethel_, destroying each other and the worlds they lived on. So it was all wiped clean. My father alone would know the truth of what had happened before, and pass that knowledge on to his descendants so that they would live rightly, in peace and not enmity toward their neighbors.

"At that moment, my father's _xarai-ethel_ came into being; I can think of no other experience that could bring about their creation so directly. With immeasurable speed, _tsa'in Azrathi_ caught them before they could scatter. And he changed them, somehow, limiting their powers. As my father would later find out, he also changed the process of their creation so that they could no longer be made naturally."

Moori opened his eyes and looked back at Piccolo.

"You still doubt; I can sense it clearly. And you still wonder if any of this has to do with your current circumstances. It does. I have realized it through retelling this hidden history.

"He told my father that there would a time in the future when the way to freedom would be illuminated to all people. When that time drew near, there would be many signs. Two great empires would fall at almost the same time. False gods would appear and lead many astray. The exiles of Namek would return. The Dragonballs would once again be hunted. And there would be a messenger."

Prophecies. They were usually vague enough to fit any given time period. But the list Moori had given…Frieza and Cold's empires had both fallen. Many were now journeying to Namek to retrieve the Dragonballs. And the exiles of Namek…

He was the first to return, then. Accompanying that thought was the absurd feeling that he was being closely watched. He again wondered if the alien he sought was anticipating his actions and decisions, perhaps even directing them…was that how prophecies worked? Did some outside force channel and mold events in time and space toward a certain end, or did they just fit together by coincidence?

"You believe this messenger to be the alien I sensed on Earth," Piccolo said slowly.

"Perhaps I spoke wrongly earlier; this being may not be a threat, but an ally…if we choose to accept it as such," Moori said. "It told Vegeta to seek the 'place of origin,' our homeworld. The place of origin of the Dragonballs."

"But how could the Dragonballs be the origin of Vegeta's questions?"

"Perhaps that is not for us to know." Moori shrugged. "In any case, it is fairly clear to me that we should be prepared for great change, and soon."

Piccolo shielded his eyes from the sun that was now halfway risen across the sky. "What happened to the executioner?"

"I do not know," Moori said. "His path of destruction was finished at Namek, and he was never seen again."

"You think this was divine judgment."

"What else could it have been, Piccolo?"

"If it was, then why wouldn't the Kais want to acknowledge any of this?"

"You grow irritated that I speak to you as one would to a child. But it seems it cannot be avoided," Moori sighed. "The Kais did not send the executioner, neither did they take action to stop him. It was not in their power to do so. As you have observed yourself, they are like mortals dwelling in a different realm governed by different laws. That is the extent to which they differ from us. Now that this messenger has appeared, revealing the origin of a connection to a force greater than they, would they not feel threatened?"

In his mind Piccolo could see the stubborn knot of disbelief inside him, the voice that told him this new version of universal history was too outlandish to be true. But what reason did Guru, the wisest being ever known to live among his people, have to lie to his only son? What else might explain the silence of the gods? And the prophecies…he himself was an element of one of them.

The questions that remained would not recede in his mind until he found the answers; at the same time, the answers he had already been presented with could not be dislodged. Nonetheless…

"Even if all this is true," he said, "how does any of it help? How can I find the 'messenger'?"

"I don't think that such a being can be found unless it wants to be found," Moori said.

"Then what are we supposed to do, just sit around on our asses and wait?"

"If the messenger meant for Vegeta to come here, then this world will remain a critical juncture. You need not leave without reason. Waiting does not have to be a passive process. It grants you time for preparation, for careful thought and testing that which is uncertain to you. And for listening. Thus far you have been hearing and speaking with the voice of Daimao alone. He recalls only Earth. Why do you not listen to those who were born of Namek?" the elder said. "You have intentionally kept them silent, have you not?"

He smiled at the look of surprise on Piccolo's face.

"Listen to the one who was born before the old ways ended. Listen, and wait," Moori said, reaching up to tap one wizened finger against Piccolo's temple. "Try to remember."

* * *

In the realm between unconsciousness and lucidity, the lines between memory and imagination, possibility and impossibility were nonexistent. Only in meditation did the reins of rationality slip from his hands. Or rather, the rules of what was rational were redefined, reshaped so as to include anything that he subconsciously imagined as truth. The empty air on which he sat, the whistling of the wind through the trees over his head and the faint laughter of children in the distance—all now existed in a separate realm, muted and faded like watercolors in his mind.

Thus far, he had only allowed one voice to speak, the one he considered the core of his self, the most prevalent pattern in the infinitely complex tapestry of his soul. The other threads of a different color and order, he had largely ignored. Somehow, they had always made him feel less whole. The interweaving of two other souls, once distinct beings, in the fabric of his essence, felt invasive. Moori had told him to listen to them.

Then he could no longer think of them as disquieting, intrusive entities, but as his own self entirely. Until now he had always been Daimao's offspring and reincarnation, a demon who had breathed evil and wrought destruction, meeting a slow death and rebirth by the innocence of a half-Saiyan child; this was the skin with which he was born, in which he moved, spoke, and thought most naturally. Alongside the dark, brooding essence of Daimao was Kami, the former keeper of Earth, the old wizened voice that quietly moved his conscience toward infinitesimal acts of good, the voice he still loathed for the extreme discomfort it made him feel. And there was Nail, the strong, simple warrior who had taken his last stand against Frieza, offering his blood and life force to delay the tyrant, and then offering his soul to Piccolo in the hope that combined, they might have victory. His voice was normally silent, a content observer, still bearing the spirit in which his soul had merged with Piccolo's—not seeking to survive for his own gain, not seeking to survive at all, but only to offer his strength when it was needed.

_Try to remember_, the elder had said.

For what purpose?

To remember his past—was that preparation for his future? A future in which he might face the being that Vegeta had encountered, the supposed 'messenger?'

With practiced control, he checked the flow of questions as a sieve might slow a constant stream of water. None would be answered if all clamored simultaneously.

The hesitation remained. He was and always would be Daimao first and foremost; the thought of assuming the voice of the other beings that were part of him, even for a moment, set him on edge and threatened to break his concentration. He would have to cast Daimao down from his throne and allow another to take his place…

He could sense the invisible barrier of his hesitation, much like the emptiness of his palms waiting to be filled with energy on the cusp of a battle. Once he broke past it, it would be easier…though he still did not know what to expect.

He had to remember. This was the reason to step down from that throne. He conceptualized the elder's words as a necessity, that there was no other option. His life was driven by necessity; hesitation was an obstacle that he would surpass.

He felt an old voice, soft and familiar, echo within him.

…_remember…_

_Remember what?_

There was the faint sense of an answering smile. He noticed then that the invisible wall of hesitation was gone, but he had not shattered or scaled it. It was simply gone, as if it had never existed.

The threads of his consciousness stirred, the older voice approaching his own, and they were face-to-face; there was no throne, only a plane of equals. Each word and thought and image, both the intelligent and senseless, flowed forth seamlessly. He listened, sensing more than hearing, remembering through the inseverable link with the being before him what it had felt like, long before, to be one voice.

_The whole…_

_The whole, incomplete, restless, wandering…_

_The whole, sundered…_

The memories were disjointed, split into fragments that slid against each other as if time moved in adjacent slices. A dark sky, dotted with stars, the first view of the universe from Earth; an image of a broken spaceship lying on its side in a forest; the first pangs of hunger; the pain of blistered feet as he wandered alone on hostile land. Hearing words for the first time, uttered by strange, soft-skinned, two-legged creatures…hearing screams, new words radiating fear and panic, seeing eyes that were blue and green and brown—in all of them he could see fear of the unknown, which bled into hate.

There was a flash of pain, the sight of his own blood...the realization that other living beings wanted him dead. They had opened his flesh with their weapons.

They were humans, he learned.

And he was not one of them.

_He yearned to be one of them, to belong…__**He began to return their hate…**__He longed to care for them, watch over them and teach them wisdom…__**To destroy them, hear their screams and delight in their pain…**__To be their invisible guardian in the sky…__**To be a destroyer king, reigning in chaos…**_

_He was not of one of them, could never be. The thought saddened him. __**It angered him, that they hated and feared him so blindly.**__ Compassion stirred within him, the knowledge that they did not know better and he could teach them a better way. __**They were weak; he could crush them under his hands like flies; he could shed their blood as they had shed his.**__ They were weak; he could protect them and guide them from an invisible place in the sky; if they did not see him, they would not fear him. They might even revere him, pray to him, beseech him for blessings and wisdom. __**They might fight back with greater hate, challenging his power, sating him with their deaths. He could rule over them, have the world cower at his feet.**_

_He strove to be worthy. To do good, to save others, to watch over the wellbeing of all people he met, as was a guardian's duty. __**He could not be worthy. He was chasing a lie, pouring his effort into impossibility. He could do good, but he could never be good. **__The people of Earth were lost; he was different, he was stronger; he could help them, shepherd them, though they rejected him. __**They would always reject him, and so they would bear his wrath; he was stronger, he could crush them, curse them, rule them. **_

_He would be the keeper of Earth. __**He would be the keeper of Earth.**_

_Seven orbs, __**a dragon**__, washing through __**his consciousness**__ and into __**the world**__, scattering over __**the land**__…_

_What were they? __**What did they mean?**_

_He would find them…__**perhaps then he would feel complete…**_

_Perhaps they would help him, empower him to do good, to be pure…_

_**Perhaps they would help him, grant him more power…**_

_Perhaps they would purge his soul of the shadow within, allow him to sleep at night in peace, without the other, the voice that raged in dark whispers…_

_**Perhaps they would make his power complete, purge his soul of unnecessary allegiances and the useless striving for good…**_

_He longed for freedom as one might thirst for water, freedom from the chains that bound his soul in shadow even as he stood on the guardian's dais. He was a pretender. His soul was wretched, undeserving, impure. His hypocrisy sickened him. How could he call himself a guardian, a protector god, when such evil lived within him…was part of him…_

_**He longed for freedom from the inane duties of protecting a people who deserved death, who were now oblivious to him, whose forefathers had shed his blood with blind hate. He was bound by a foolish conscience that checked his thirst for destruction and chaos; he longed to break those chains and be free to do as he wished, to live for himself alone…**_

_He searched long and far for the seven orbs._

_**He searched long and far, slowly driven to the edge of madness.**_

_Each night he felt the invisible threads of his connection to the orbs and the dragon that lived within them. They whispered wordlessly, waiting for their union._

_**Each night he raged, straining against the despair of the impossible task set before him. The whispers mocked him; he would never find them.**_

_He would never be free._

_**He would never be free.**_

_He decided to kill the other._

_**He challenged the other to try.**_

_The pain could not be described in words or lucid thought—the pain of half his soul, half the cells in his body tearing apart, dying._

_**The pain was his triumph. The other was too weak to bear it. He knew that he would have victory, perhaps not in the way he had first imagined it…**_

_The pain was too much to bear. He could not kill the other…so he freed it._

_**Piccolo Daimao rose from the pool of blood and bile that stained the sanctuary in the sky. He took his first breath, free of the bonds of a frail body burdened by conscience and care and all the absurd things he could not understand.**_

_He took a breath, shallow and weak, and beheld the demon standing before him. The devil that would threaten to destroy his world and the people he had sworn to protect. A demon born from his own soul._

"_And he would realize that he was not free, could not be free by the mere virtue of his existence._

_Most of all, he could not be free from himself—_

_all the uncertainties resulting from his choices…_

_the small and great evils he was capable of…_

_the dark intentions and thoughts he harbored that were too shameful to disclose to others."_

Moori's words.

They rang true for him. He had experienced that yearning for freedom, which his people believed was intrinsic to all sentient life. The struggle between conscience, the wish to be free from evil and darkness, and that other voice, the one that wished to be free to live without care or allegiances.

If he had found the Dragonballs in his youth, would he have thought to make the wish for freedom? Would it have purged his soul of Daimao and cleansed him of hypocrisy, the stain on his conscience that plagued him every day he stood on high as Earth's guardian?

In any case, he had not found the Dragonballs. He had achieved freedom his own way, but at great cost to himself and Earth. Kami had been freed of evil and hate, but Daimao had been freed as well, unleashed upon the world.

Now he was both Kami and Daimao, and it seemed the image he saw of himself in meditation had never been so unclear. Was that yearning for freedom still there within him? Was there still a wish waiting to be made?

He had never cared so much to have answers, to simply _know _what was unknown to him. One central question was emerging among the immediate concerns that had led him back to Namek in the first place.

He did not know himself. He was Piccolo, but he had given himself that name. He was three beings of distinct names and memories in one body and soul. He was three voices, yet spoke with only one of them. How could he be three and one at the same time when the mere acknowledgement of the other voices signified their disunity? He was not whole, had never been, from the moment he had become conscious of the dark voice that yearned for violence to this very moment, when Moori had reminded him that he was not entirely Piccolo Daimao.

His own name suddenly rang hollow. Only part of him answered to it—the one born of Earth. The others were silent.

_Piccolo…_

_Piccolo!_

The questions scattered as his concentration broke, jarred out of that unseen realm by the sudden mental call. He was a second slow to realize it was Dende. The young Namek's voice was urgent, strained.

_What is it, kid?_ He opened his eyes, allowing his senses to reenter the physical world where everything was solid, defined by lines and color.

_It's Bulma and Trunks. She sent a distress call to her father, saying that they're both in danger. She also said 18 disappeared, she thinks someone managed to kidnap—_

He frowned. _18 was with her?_

_Yes. She brought her along for protection._

Piccolo had to shake his head—Bulma's powers of manipulation were impressive, but to persuade the machine girl to do such a favor for her? He wondered how she had managed that.

_The signal was cut off suddenly. Dr. Briefs hasn't been able to get back in touch with Bulma, and he's very worried. Gohan brought the news to me and he's regretting not having gone with Bulma to protect her._

He growled in annoyance. _I told that insufferable woman not to go after Vegeta. She's only brought this trouble on herself._

_Piccolo! _It was Gohan. _You have to help her! Trunks is in danger too!_

He paused at the sound of his pupil's desperate voice. _I know they need help, Gohan. But what I came here to deal with—_

_If you don't go find them, then I will. _The boy's statement carried the sound of a threat alongside a plea. _I shouldn't have let them go by themselves…_

_This is not the time for you to start playing hero, Gohan,_ Piccolo said bluntly. The recklessness in the boy's voice was enough to warrant his harsh response. He could not afford another loose variable in an already complicated state of affairs. _You are not to leave Earth, do you understand me?_

_How can I just stand by while they're in danger? How can I be so heartless?_

Gohan sounded more frayed than ever, stretched too thin. Piccolo wondered if his absence was a partial cause of the boy's heightened level of anxiety. He had only been gone for a few weeks…but Gohan did not have anyone else close to him, did he? Only his mother and infant brother.

_Gohan. Do you know how to pilot a ship?_

A tense pause. _No._

Piccolo decided that one rhetorical question was enough to get his student to reconsider his reckless heroic urge; asking another would only serve to undermine the boy's confidence.

_I know you're concerned. I am as well,_ he spoke honestly. _But you will not leave Earth and make things more difficult than they already are._

_Then you have to go after them. What if this is the work of the alien Vegeta met?_

The thought was unexpected. Messenger or not, the mysterious being was beyond understanding or predicting at the moment. If it had gone to Vegeta first…perhaps Bulma and Trunks had a role to play as well.

_Maybe. Maybe it is,_ he responded gruffly.

_Whatever's happening out there, promise you'll save them, Piccolo._

It struck him that Gohan called him by name naturally, without the hesitation and discomfort that he himself now felt. The boy knew him only as Piccolo, had always treated him the same even after he had fused with Nail and rejoined with Kami. Perhaps…perhaps he was who he was, not solely by his own power and decision, but by the acknowledgement of others, Gohan most of all. The thought gave him some sense of peace, brushing away a bit of the irritating uncertainty within.

He cared little for Bulma and her son. They were not his responsibility, and he owed them nothing. Yet conscience stood apart from personal debt, or lack thereof. Perhaps the memories of Kami and his own sire had deepened that conscience. Or perhaps it was the influence of the boy—so like his father, irritatingly pure of heart, full of good intentions and inexplicable care for others.

And so he made another promise he was not sure he could fulfill, simply because Gohan had asked. The boy _was_ his conscience in large part.

But within himself, he could not deny what he had confronted during that brief time of meditation—the knowledge of that inner conflict that had driven his original being to the point of self-sundering. A conflict between conscience and will, a divide that still remained.

Perhaps as he traveled the expanse between Namek and his next destination, he would begin to cross that distance within himself, and understand his own being more fully. Whenever the 'messenger,' whether enemy or ally, chose to be found, he would be prepared for their meeting.

* * *

**Author's Note**: This took unbearably long to finish. Feedback is very important at this point. Any criticisms are welcome. I would like to engage my readers from now on and see what they're getting out of this story, and how I can improve my writing. Here are some things I am wondering in particular:

What themes are most prominent so far?

Has this story challenged you to rethink something in life or to begin thinking about something you had not considered before?

What do you think of the religious overtones in this chapter?

You can answer one or all of these questions; I would appreciate any input. The encouragement and comments I have received in reviews so far have been very helpful. Thank you for reading!


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